Being an xbox owner, i dont know if this is a bad thing or not. One thing that i am jealous of is PS3 gamers can basically play online right out of the box as they dont have to play. I have heard that the comms and gaming itself is a bit more laggier, which maybe indicates you get what you pay for? Is this true PS3'ers? Cos im thinking of grabbing a PS3 come xmas time, and what i find so attractive is that it has a hard-disk wifi straight out of the box etc. as opposed to the 360.

Does anyone own a 360 and a PS3? How do the two online experiences compare are MS right in keeping the charge? Or should they make gaming free seeing as they are starting to make so much money on digital downloads and all these new media services they are going to be introducing it?

Its not 40 quid. Look around and you can get it for 25 quid or less. Very good value

the whole LIVE experience "connected" and the features of LIVE (in game chat, lobbies, private chat, gamercard, score etc.) are what differentiates LIVE from PSN. In game performance (no lag) is actually better on PSN in my opinion, but its marginal. Depends whats important for you. For actual online gameplay PSN won't disappoint but it all feels a little bit independent from the overall experience compared to the fully integrated feeling you get on LIVE.

Lag on PSN is a myth. The speed of the service is just as good, if not better than Xbox Live (due to dedicated servers being allowed for games).

Content on PSN is more than worth it in my opinion.

The only thing PSN is missing is the full interaction with the friends list (ingame invite to game etc)..

Bad thing. Even if you can get it for £25, every other platform under the sun offers free net gaming. What do you really get for your money? The opportunity to download things a week before your silver mates and online play that is offered by everyone else.

Don't get rid of the fee, MS, but offer something worth paying for.

@5

Something has to be worth paying for if they have over 12m people on XBL...Right? or not.

For me paying £40 is not a problem as I see it going somewhere. My games run smoothly over Live and there's an update twice a year which makes significant improvements to performance, UI or both.

I'm not saying its perfect for everyone and i would love to have it for free but I played Halo online for about 6 months with my friends, and have moved onto several others. That £40 a year makes my other games last a lot longer which saves me money in the long run.

Not having to pay for the PSN is great and FREE is obviously better than £40, but the games i want to play are on my xbox, so i don't mind paying for it.

I have both systems and the few differences when playing online, at least in my case, are the lag on in-game chat and the missing in-game invite, but those negative points are surpassed by the fact it`s free on PS3. Playing online with no fee charge right out of the box is a very strong point on PSN side.

I own both, and I'm very pleased with the M$ service. It's fast and easy to use.

I played several games online on PS3, and they played perfectly, with no lag. But when it comes to the interface, it just sucks, not user friendly at all. Downloads are also VERY slow, compared to what you get on 360.

While I get it quite cheaply from a source I do wish it was a little cheaper at retail, although I would prefer it if it was not free, as then you would have every kid with broadband getting on and causing mayhem with no forethought for others.

It was the same problem on the PS2 with the games I played online for that, in that peple could create multiple accounts. In some cases called teamkiller ## and they would just cause annoyance in the game for everyone, even if that account got banned they can just go make another and cause trouble.
Paying for live stops the problem mostly as you cant just create account after account really and since you pay for it you have some commitment to the account so if you mess around its your own money wasted.
At least since you have to buy your own headset for PSN it means that many people dont bother so kids dont overrun the games with constant chatting.

"Lag on PSN is a myth. The speed of the service is just as good, if not better than Xbox Live (due to dedicated servers being allowed for games)."

Both services allow dedicated servers so I dont know what your implying there, its just that not many companies want to do it as it eats into their profits.
Though with the amount of money games now make for their publishers ( I'm looking at you COD4) I think its time for them to find ways to do it more often.

Lets face it, PSN and Live offer the SAME online multiplayer functionality in games. COD4 has all the same limits, online game modes on both services. What is different is the ability to pay to play on Live, whereas the PSN is free. Live offers in game music and voice chat game invites but other than that the game play is identical. Both offer voice chat, ranking etc. So why pay for the online play on Live when the PSN has you covered?

I own both consoles and anyone saying the PSN is even comparible in terms of todays games, to that found on XBL is just kidding themselves.

I am more than happy to pay for XBL on the grounds I get excellent service, chat in and out of game, cross game invites, fast downloads and a great user interface.

Everything on the PSN seems to be difficult if you want to play with mates. no cross game invites being the real killer. Seriously if you are a PS3 owner and have never used XBL see if one of your mates can let you try it for the evening you'll see how easy everything is and how fluidly it all works compared to PSN.

Obviously this view will change if Sony finally decide to get ther act in gear and give us all thoses things. At that point I will see no real reason to pay for XBL over PSN but until then the £40 is no problem for a great service

It's constantly lagging and freezes up the dashboard.
It should be Free if Sony and Nintendo can do online play for free why cant Microsoft? If sure Mr Bill Gates doesn't need the money that much!!

Nintendo's online service, yes its free because it is crap.
When you cant even invite someone into a game who is on your friends list that just takes the biscuit.
You cant even chat thru the console so you have to contact them via other methods to tell them to join your game. If they even tried to charge for it they would fail epicly.

I suppose the 1 big thing that I enjoy from the xbl is the games betas that are run on it, there may not be that many but being able to try cod4/bf bc in advance and give feedback is easily worth it.
Hell without the battlefield beta on xbl we wouldnt be getting the conquest mode for it anytime soon since it was the feedback from that beta that got DICE to actually decide to put it back in as they had no intention of having it in.

mine rearly freezes now unlike the early days, I would suggest you are doing something wrong if you are having this problem all the time and as per Jays comments the online service for the Wii is next to useless, very little functionality and you still need to e-mail or pick up the phone to see what your friends are doing and if they want to play.

Seriously guys if you want a quality service with lots of beneficial features then you are going to have to pay for it. If you are happy with a vey limited service that just about lets you play online then go with the Wii. The PSN at the moment fits somewhere in the middle.

Currently, LIVE is worth paying for, from what I hear as a PS3 user, it sounds excellent. The online features and functionality of the PS3 will obviously grow over time with further firmware updates. It's up to Microsoft to "stay ahead" to warrant charing for it obviously.

I look at it like this: When I bought my 360 to play Halo 3 I paid around £200 for the console then £50 for Halo 3 so I could join in a 4 player co-op game with mates. I then had to fork out £40 on top of all that just to play the co-op...

To play the multiplayer element of Halo I had to spend £90... that's £40 just to play the other half of the game.

To me that's pretty bad... If I buy a game that has a huge online element I don't expect it to be the same price as a normal game.

I don't deny Live's quality but I do grudge having to pay for the ability to enjoy the basic elements of my games.

i feel dat ps3 is betta in terms of online play....2 mah knowledge psn has jus over 10 million users....xbl has sumwhere like wat 15....
if im correct i dont rememba psn crashin wen it hit 10 mil..jus like xbl did last xmas.....
dont act like u dunno wat im talkin bout

n da lag is awesome on 360....2 bad there is little 2 none on psn...

As a PS3 user myself, your talking complete ****. Pathetic trolling.

ok it may be true that the 360 online server is more user friendly but the PS3 isn't far behind now so what happens when they are on par with each other?

but to be honest paying £40 isn't good and if you don't buy it in year on year chunks u end up paying nearly £50. now I can see why MS do because £40 that's equal to the sales of 3 games.

so I think they don't need to scrap it (well they do but that'll never happen) but it would be nice if they reduced it to £25 a year

Thanks guys. Like the gold the gold rush pan-handlers of old, I was able to sift through the fan-boy trolling and get some good, constructive opinions. Im gonna see how i feel at xmas time, Im hoping Sony will take it up a notch with PSN by the time im ready to make a purchase. A price cut would be good too, although thats unlikely to happen from the sounds of it lol.

I have both consoles and the price for Xbox Live is worth it. It boils down to an absolutely minimal cost on a monthly basis. Cheaper than a pint. For this fee, you get online play that works and a vast array of networking tools. For example, the two biggest games on PS3 so far - GTA and MGS - have both had significant online issues on PSN. GTA didn't work for the first couple weeks and MGS still doesn't seem to work. On the Xbox Live side, GTA worked flawlessly from the first day, and other huge titles like CoD 4 and Halo 3 have had massive success without a hitch. I had purchased GTA on PS3, but decided to return it in favor of the Xbox version. Happy I did. Xbox Live already wins in my opinion, and with new features like Parties coming out soon, it's becoming increasingly hard to care about PS3 features like in-game XMB which have been on the 360 since launch.

Okay, I put it this way; The gamble.

Say the PS3 does catch up and still has PSN free whilst XBL is charged, except from playing Halo 3 and GoW, you'll find yourself with a bill of culminated online subscriptions as much, if OVER the price of the PS3, which is quite customisable as in Hard drive, wallpapers, themes, etc.
PSN is actually easier and faster to connect with because of some games actually supporting servers to select, theres no waiting like I have done many a time in Halo 3 as I 'wait for the correct numbers of players'. Pretty much an instant connection on the PSN, GTAIV did once have its problems, but no longer, a game can be joined right away.
What half you people who worship XBL fail to realise that defending with features such as XBLA, DLC and In game music is the fact that with a free Silver membership; you can get all those like anyone with Gold Live, in fact, the last one is built into the damn software! So it doesn't even apply!
I'm in a case that I have to live without the internet when I'm down at university, I prefer the fact that I can turn on my PS3 without the feeling of wasting money or a subscription running out.
Despite the 'apparently' better services of XBL, PSN is free and has just about learnt to stand on its own legs also bear in mind, XBL is a better service only because it is paid for, PSN is steadily catching up and except from 'Friend Invites' and In game chat, its pretty much there. Besides, why does 360 have to be so different when every single other console platform was free to play online?

Lengthy; but think about it, whilst everyone complains about the cost of the PS3 as a console, you are paying about as much for the 360, buying a charger, subscription, possibly a wireless adapter and come up to about the same price as a PS3 in about 2 years of XBL subscription fees, then theres the price of getting Microsoft Points (which are impossible to manage compared to real currency) select DLC and XBLA titles. Total that up on a calculator; see what you get.
In total, I have figured that my 360 has actually cost me more than my PS3 straight out of the box.

Well, personally I'm now glad that I have a PS3, because with PSN steadily gaining ground on LIVE it is just one more game a year that I can buy. Besides I can't dedicate as much time online, so it doesn't justify the annual expense, and whatever online time I do want, can be satiated free on PSN. However, please don't misunderstand I enjoy my 360, and its games I just don't like paying for casual online time, and a side effect of that is now I opt for the PS3 version of multiplatform games to get my online fix. It is too bad MS can't adopt a free strategy also, but I guess since so many people are willing to shell out the dough, they'll continue to happily take it (even though I don't believe they offer anything unique that's worth the price for admission).

:( the reason you wait for "other players" in Halo has nothing to do with XBL, its Bungie's servers and their hopper "netcode". They set up their online that way. There are plenty of online games were you can jump straight into the action using quick match etc.

The PSN just needs to be a little more user friendly and have some sort of party/clan/group system (which would definetely make it more appealing than Live as competitive gaming is very popular on consoles). If they would go further in the direction of a social infrastructure and make the gamers feel like they are part of a community then i could easily see PSN competing very strongly with Live if not outdoing it. I just don't have much faith in Sony producing the goods.

To be honest I think everyone will have their own views for evermore but I think Manum Epsilon hit the nail on the head with the difference without probably even knowing it.........

For multiplayer online because of the chat, cross game invites and general social infrastructure etc XBL works better no contest (and as I have said before I do own and use both consoles regularly) but........ if you are happy playing offline then the PS3 wins all hands down.

To me personally without the online I would not even bother with my console so as with Manum when at Uni and not having connection I would find other things to do and probably not even own a console at all

So for people like me at the moment - and please notice i have said at the moment - they will always favour the Xbox for its online performance, for those who enjoy just playing the games by themselves or with people locally then I would agree the PS3 is probably champion with all its features

There are a few factors here that always get "conveniently" left out of the equation in this argument.

Out of the box, you can play the 360 online, in HD, with chat. Can you do that with the PS3? No, there are no HD cables and there is no headset, so lets add that to the cost of a machine that is already £100 more for the same gaming experience. You don't need wireless adapters, you DO need headsets and HD cables and those are the essential things Sony decided to charge you for. You want rumble in those online games too... Ker-chingggg, that's another £40 please.

So those of you claiming that the PSN is as good as XBL for free, how do you justify the fact that as far as gaming is concerned, the console that costs you £100 more, is giving you "exactly the same" gaming experience. You could argue just as easily that the PS3 doesn't justify its extra cost as it offers nothing different over the equivalent 360 game. In fact, considering the amount of games that don't offer things like voice chat etc.. you are getting a lesser gaming experience.

I've had both of these machines since launch day and 18 months into the PS3 lifespan, PSN is still only about as good as XBL was at launch, in some cases, still worse. It took them 18 months to get in-game XMB just so you could message people without having to quit a game. 18 months to get a launch feature of the 360... that's what free services get you.

You get an online store that looks like a budget website and download speeds that make you cry when you see that another "System Software Update is required". 3 updates in one month @ 120MB a time and all in the cause of playing catch-up. I mean, what is it now, 23 or so system updates, do you realise how many GB that is? I hate the PSN and the interface to the system.

As a UI designer myself, the whole thing just reeks of a cheap, quick hack and port from the PSP.

I guess the plus side for PSN is that at least you're not paying for online abuse. The great downside to XBox Live is the constantly unmoderated problem of rascist & homophobic abuse. Those who do something to address the issue will be those who are seen to care.

Are you trying to say that that no voice chat is a good thing? That's just silly, why do people (especially sony people) get into petty fanboy arguments. You can disable voice communications at any time, you can mute specific players and you can file a complaint (if the same complaint is filed multiple times the account is band from xbox live) or lower the players rep. No problem, and actually just further points out the benefits of the xbl service. I personally think both systems are great, but i'm a sucker for gears and too poor for the both of them ;)

PSN is pretty crap.

Im happy paying for Live, you get your moneys worth. Stop being so tight about it. You all deffo spend more than £40 squid a year on other lame stuff.