Sony Boss says paying for online gameplay helped reduce PS4 price

Sony Entertainment UK Boss, Fergal Gara has said that charging for online multiplayer on the PS4 – which will be the first time Sony has taken this route – helped reduce the overall price of the console, although he then stated that it was something that Sony had to “agonize over for a very long time”

On the PS4, online multiplayer is now integrated into the PlayStation Plus network. This means that for most games, if you want to play others over the internet, you’ll need to be a Plus subscriber. However, PS+ appears to be great value for the money, and most gamers really didn’t have that much to complain about when all the details were revealed at last week’s E3 Conference.

“First of all,” says Gara, “we wanted to introduce the console at a healthy price-point compared with PS3,” and that was apparently “front and centre in our thinking and our planning for years.”

Charging for online, or at least bundling it within Plus, will mean that the service can more realistically approach the levels that Xbox Live does. Gara says that PSN will mirror “the social features you’ve seen demonstrated on more of a world-class network” and has seen Sony “investing in a higher performance network” that will offer “better performance and reliability”.

As well as talking about PlayStation Plus, Gara also confirmed some of the rumors that have been floating around in recent press releases concerning cross-game chat. This means the ability to talk to those who are not playing the same game as you, or is in a different team to yourself. Gara simply said, “It’s there”.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/DmoZAPDV3ew&w=560]

Watch the entire PS4 E3 Conference above.