wow looks like MS has given people another reason to get a PS3 over the red ring master.

Who the hells wants to sit in their living room and follow Twitter and Facebook on their television?

Too bad most developers would take more time developing in the PS3's crapSDK.

I love competitions!!!!!!

Sony and MS, please keep bring new service to us (specially the "free" service!!!)

No matter we own a Xob360, PS3, or both.... We are all winners!!!

By the way, SONY:. since now we can play Netflix... can we get the Hulu back?

There, fixed that statement for you.

Funny, I think Free services, Blu-Ray playback, upgradable hard drives, and gaming a much greater value than Facebooking and Twittering in my home entertainment setup...

Doesn't the PS3s web browser support facebook and twitter? I've never been to those sites on my PS3. I know my Pre supports just about everything I need on on the main site of facebook (except post deletion). You'd be controller gimped (if you didn't have a keyboard attached), but you'd have that even with a dedicated app.

Competition.
In the words of a crazy OCD ex-con:
'Its a good thing'.

I would gladly pay $4 a month to have the Xbox 360 interface and Live service on the PS3. It just isn't in the same ballpark. It's free and you can tell that it's free.

For instance, yesterday my friend and I were trying to play Madden 2010 online and voice chat. He could hear me coming through his speakers but I couldn't hear him. His mic was working perfectly fine but something was wrong with his copy of Madden. On the 360 we just join a private chat through XBL and forget about in-game chat but on the PS3 you can't private chat while in a game. This is a feature XBL has had since the original Xbox.

That's just one example and there are hundreds of more. Literally it's $4/month and people are complaining about it. $4. I would gladly take the $50/year XBL service on the PS3. It's one of the only things that keeps my Xbox running and the ONLY reason I'll be buying COD4:MW2 on the 360 instead of PS3.

"So does Microsoft plan on dropping the requirement? Will Xbox 360 owners get access to Netflix without having to shell out additional Live membership fees?"

No!
Not only will they not remove the Live membership fee, they actually plan on doubling it, but not for the next couple of months they say.

And yes, the PS3 browser does allow going directly to Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Hulu and lots of other places as well.
Just get a bluetooth keyboard and you are set to go anywhere on the web.
You can even play flash and java based on-line games right over the browser.
The only thing you can't do is install anything unless you are running an installed Linux.

So what does playing your games have anything to do with the fact that you can watch movies and not pay extra?

For a paid service, Xbox Live sucks. I tried a free trial and thought it was insane that people actually paid $50+ a year for it. And if someone else plays on the same console, they have to pay for their own Xbox Live membership. It's a huge rip off. Not to mention the actual service was horrible, prone to lag and disconnects, and waiting for a game in matchmaker takes way too long. By the time a game starts, I've already lost interest in playing. I haven't played online on PS3 much, but the times I have didn't have many problems, and even if it did have problems, I could forgive them because it's FREE.

Why can't people just buy both and get along?

For consumers who own both consoles, the choice should be obvious.

For consumers who have both are more than likely paying for gold xbl anyway so it wouldnt matter, if that was the case i would at first use the xbox as i dont need a disk to access netflix then it would depend which on im on at the time

I never thought I'd say this, but methinks PS3 is now poised to overtake Xbox 360. For $299 the PS3 is clearly a way better value for the money. If didn't already own all 3 consoles and have to choose what to buy right now, I'll pick the PS3 in a heartbeat. MS should just introduce another console next year with next gen processing power and blu-ray drive. And of course, with Natal built in.

Yes you can private chat while in a game on PS3. I do it all the time.

Well Netflix is the only reason I got a gold membership... and once it's available for the PS3 I doubt I'll keep paying for it since I'm not into online 360 gaming.

gonna get a ps3 this boxing day

He is trying to explain to the poor minded like apparently you dont get it, why the XBL shoudnt be free and why PSN will never be any close as good as XBL. The fact live gaming is way WAY better on the 360 is what matter to someone like me that bought his damn console cause its for GAMING whatsoever. So im exactly of the same idea. Even if it goes a WHOLE whooping 20%+ the price ( which makes it about a whole 5$.. ) Id still pay for it cause of the quality gaming other than the rest of the services...

Now if you wanna tlak about multimedia and/or movies in specific Ive had Netflix and PS3 users didnt. Since when do they get to talk as if it hasnt been that way till now? Or you will really tell me that PSN is any good? How many ppl use PS3 for browsing? None of us, How many would tho wanna check twitter really quick in between their gaming? a lot ( not me though cause i hate all facebook and twitter actually ).

Anyhow, the whole gen Sony has been copying all MS moves and XBL and gaywised the WiiMote to make a wand out of it. Onlything theirs was BR and thats the only thing that kept them back and costed them a lot of money. So when I decide to get everything second hand and worst quality and with a delay ( crossplatform titles included ) then ill excuse Sony's choices and options and ill be as dumb to say "yay its worth it". Till then, im sorry I just cant get myself to agree with any of Sony's strategy the past few years on the gaming part...

Hmmmm, PS3 is the only one that originally had:
-HDMI
-Built in wifi (which Xbox still doesn't have, but charges $100 extra for the adapter)
-Upgradeable HDD (rather than the overpriced proprietary drive Xbox requires)
-Built in HD disc drive (which Xbox still doesn't have)

Hell the whole concept of the Xbox 360 Elite sku was an answer to what teh PS3 had from the beginning, and it still doesn't equal it.

" Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Last.fm"

these can all be accessed free on any other internet enabled device. its only understandable for the exclusive content to be tied up with a membership fee (demos, DLC, FAST game servers ect) netflix and everything else should be free.

Ive never liked the idea of being forced to pay for something that should be free. XBL is decent but I feel there should be a lot of free games if your paying "extra" just to use the game you've already purchased. PS3 has more to offer period. Blu-ray player rivals that of ones costing twice the price of the PS3. And with a %50 failure rate of the 360 it just doesnt make sense. With a PSP as a remote and games for download now its pretty much a no brainer. Oh I forgot 120gb HDD and no possibility of upgrading it?? WTF. We have 2+ terabyte drives on the horizon for christ sake. microsoft has some catching up to do.

If attacking & putting down people just to get your point across a way to have others see your point, I would say grow up a little. This article is mainly about streaming movies for either an additional fee or get it free. Some of us out there don't believe in the pay for the game and pay even more to play. Now for the same service in netflix for those don't have XBL, what do you think is going to happen when they are giving a choice between paying and not paying.

if Sony would just add PS2 emulation with a firmware upgrade to the slim, I would buy one.

Cletus_slackjawd: You've had about 2 years to get a Hardware based PS2 emulation. People complained about the price, and removing the extra hardware that MOST people didn't use was a way of doing that.

But a lot of little birds and the patent office are showing signs that Sony will sell PS2 titles as downloads to work on the PS3... so that is a good thing! No discs to worry about and typical game titles are only few hundred megabytes each. If each game title is $1~10, that's not bad. Want PC emulations, theres a Commodore64 emulator that is free (includes games) and a $30 Amiga emulator.

In Japan, the Xbox360 is pretty much dead, it nosed dive into the ground even faster after the PS3Slim was released. There are websites showing 360 games in "bargin bins" - which is even worse compared to the USA. Off the top of my head, for every 360 sold in Japan - about 700 PS3s are sold. Wii sales are below PS3 sales (in Japan).

* I don't own any consoles. But when I do, it'll be a PS3 as I will use it to double as a BluRay player.

WhinyLittlePoop :

I forgot to add. MS can't just POP out a next gen console next year. There is still a good amount of life left in current consoles (I'm not including Wii).

I think MS will make a Xbox362 (That is my idea... I would call it 362 since its not a MAJOR change) that has blu-ray and Natal. It'll be in a bigger case to allow better cooling and most likely be more reliable than any 360 before it. At best, it would cost at least $300... and sold at a loss. At $350... it'll be a harder sell. Unlike SONY, MS will be paying full price for those Blu-Ray drives.

That's a laughable response by MS. Claiming all these internet options are justification to the price of an online service is ludicrous... they could easily just add a freaking web browser to the 360 for people to get their twitter, facebook, whatever on.

Why is your text in gray?

A lot of reasons to not have a 360. An upcoming update will cause people's 360s to NOT read their large memory cards. While SONY allows the end user to USE ANY flash memory device... MS requires you to pay about $30 for a 512mb card. Some of the 4GB $50 cards are not authorized by MS.

I have a NetFlix account, and I am totaly not interested in real-time-streaming. But, my wife and daughter or watching NetFlix streaming video a lot. They like to watch it on their notebook computers at night while in bed.

We have a PS3 hooked up to a large flat plasma screen in our family room. We got it last Xmas thinking it would give the kids a more active way to play video games. I just went to NetFlix, clicked on 2 buttons and now NetFlix will be shipping me my PS3 disk (for free).

It's going to be interesting to see how this catches on with my family.

i hope they do a feature comparison of netflix on the ps3 vs 360.

I will be pissed if you're right. It'd better be an Xbox 720 with upgraded CPU and graphics chip with at DirectX 11+ support. I'm sick of PCs getting the short end of the stick because consoles are outdated.