Tycho, of Penny Arcade has a few things to say to gamers who call themselves “fans” of the $600+ Playstation 3:

They’ve gotten a lot of traction differentiating themselves from Microsoft by offering “free online play,” which people hear as “free Xbox Live,” and I don’t know that we can believe anything of the kind. Until it is absolutely verified that we are talking about single sign in, single friends list, unified architecture, and invites across products from different publishers, they are not replicating the competing premium service. The PlayStation 2 has “free online play” as well, and it becomes apparent fairly quickly that it is free (which is to say, $40) because they have given the user nothing, and the developer nothing, and the publisher nothing.

Read the whole thing.