Sony: 'More free PS3 services planned'

Sony's worldwide president Shuhei Yoshida has said he is looking at advertising and business partnerships as a way of funding more free services for PS3 and PSP users.

"We're more open about approaching and bringing services in to PS3 and PSP," Yoshida told GamesIndustry.

"We can't support all the needs of the consumer and there are great companies providing services on the PC already - so we're very open to provide the opportunity to those companies to reach our user base as well.

"We like to provide as many services as possible for free - we already provide our network access for gameplay for free - and the interesting thing about the network side and the Internet business is that there's a variety of revenue sources."

When asked about funding its forthcoming VidZone service, Yoshida said he is looking at "advertising and so on".

He explained: "Those are things we're looking at, and learning how we can provide a service without people having to pay - but we still get our operation running with funding from somewhere so that we can maintain the level of quality we want."

Sony's free service VidZone will launch early in 2009, giving users access to music streaming and offering the option of porting downloads to a PSP.