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Oh - and it's all free, too. The only place you'll be asked to fork over a penny is when you purchase something in the PlayStation Store - all of the online services, from sign-up right through to voice and video chat, are free, as is normal multiplayer gaming. There's no equivalent of the Xbox Live Gold account, where you're expected to pay extra for a further tier of services - the only things you'll pay money for are paid-for downloadable content, or subscriptions to premium services like massively multiplayer games.

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Crucially, the Wallet is used for everything on the system - even for MMOG subscriptions to third parties. If it's on the PlayStation Network, you pay for it via Sony and the transaction with the third party is worked out elsewhere - so you're not expected to give credit card details out willy-nilly to everyone with content or services on the PS3.

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