Sony has confirmed with VideoGamer.com that auto-updates, social features and some entertainment on the PlayStation 4 will not be behind a pay-wall. In confirming this news Sony says that it is "trying to be as balanced and as fair as we possibly can." TV and online movie services will also continue to be free to all PS4 users.

One of the issues some players have with transitioning to a fancy new console is leaving behind a massive library of games because newer systems tend not to support backwards compatibility. Sony's new console is no exception because it has abandoned its old architecture in favor of a new one that is completely different from what the PS3 uses.

But Sony has found a round-about way of allowing players to enjoy their old games on their new system - even though it will likely cost consumers a little extra money for the pleasure of playing those old games.

If you pay close attention to Sony's video about sharing video games on the PS4 then you'll likely note that playing the multiplayer portion of games on the PlayStation 4 will require a PlayStation Plus account. This was also mentioned briefly in a slide during the E3 press conference on Monday evening.

The fine print in the video notes:

"PS4 multiplayer online access requires PSN account & PS Plus subscription."

Sony put to bed a lot of questions this evening at its E3 Expo 2013 press conference that Microsoft stumbled with, fumbled and mangled last month. While Microsoft said it was up to publishers whether or not gamers could sell, trade, or loan their Xbox One games out, Sony threw out a phrase that resonated with gamers tonight: "True Consumer Ownership." Sony promised no restrictions on used games or rentals, loaning games out to friends, selling them, etc. This is what consumers had hoped to hear from Sony and the company did not disappoint them.

Blizzard announced this morning that Diablo III will be released on the PlayStation 3 on September 3, 2013. The company also revealed that an Xbox 360 version of the game has been in the works for quite some time and will release on the same date. Both games will be released simultaneously in the U.S., Canada, Spanish-speaking Latin America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Electronic Arts has cut the price of online passes for dozens of its games - and in some cases - has made them free of charge, according to Eurogamer. Earlier in the month EA announced that it was discontinuing the use of its online pass system.

Sony has released a trailer for a new PS Vita game that lets you be a men's room attendant called "Men's Room Mayhem." In the game - coming to the PS Vita "soon" - players direct patrons to stalls and urinals, keep the men's room sparkling clean, break up fights that might occur, and deal with other situations that apparently crop up in public bathrooms all over the world. The game avoids some of the other more unseemly things that happens in public restrooms, thankfully.

The Columbus Dispatch reports that 23-year-old Todd M. Miller has been sentenced to one year of house arrest for his part in the 2008 security breach of Sony's PlayStation Network. Miller wasn't convicted on charges directly related to the hacking, but for destroying computers the FBI was interested in investigating related to the crime. Miller was sentenced last week.

Last July South Korea began enforcing a law that would keep teens under the age of 16 from playing games during a six hour block at night. The law was dubbed the "Shutdown Law" and promised strict enforcement and punishment for places where teens go to play online whether that be a cyber cafe or using online services such as the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live.

An interesting story via the Huffington Post (based on this CBC report) details sexual predators in the United States using online games and consoles to talk to children in Canada. This particular report focuses on Winnipeg, but it's not far-fetched to imagine that if it's happening in one province, it's happening to some degree in other provinces as well.

Sony Computer Entertainment Japan and Sony Computer Entertainment Asia have been consolidated into one business unit operating within Sony, according to this press release - as uncovered by Kotaku. The combined operation will now be called Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia.

Fans of Level-5's 2010 RPG White Knight Chronicles will be sad to hear that Sony is pulling the plug on online game servers June 18. A tweet about the same thing happening to White Knight Chronicles 2 online servers from the official PlayStation Twitter account was tweeted but has since disappeared.

Update: We didn't have to wait long to hear Vblank Entertainment's thoughts on WiiWare. Speaking to Nintendo Life exclusively in an interview to be published in full over the weekend, Brian Provinciano called the WiiWare release a $20,000 gift to Wii fans. He asks everyone to go buy it so he can recoup some of those costs.

CCP Games announced that its long-running subscription-based sci-fi MMO EVE Online has surpassed the 500,000 subscriber mark worldwide for the first time in the game’s history. The milestone is a major one in the game's ten years of operation and follows the December 4 release of EVE Online: Retribution, the game’s 18th free expansion. CCP says that this latest expansion is its most successful ever. Also in December, EVE Online relaunched in China with new partner Tiancity to bring the game to a massive new audience where it has been thriving ever since.

Diablo 3 for the PS3 and PS4 will not feature cross-platform play but it will include an offline mode for PS3 and PS4 players. PC players cannot play the game without being connected to Battle.net - even when playing single-player. The clarification on cross-platform play was made by the game's community manager Vaeflare on the Battle.net forums.

A patent filed for in 2011 by Sony Computer Entertainment America (and unearthed last week by web site Dark Zero) uses load times to determine if software being loaded into a system is legitimate or pirated.

The patent, "BENCHMARK MEASUREMENT FOR LEGITIMATE DUPLICATION VALIDATION," is described as follows in the patent application:

If you have ever left your PS3 untouched for a long period of time, chances are that the next time you turn it on you'll have to download and install a firmware update. The problem with this has always been that you can do nothing while this is happening - and if your connection is spotty at times - waiting for it to download can take what seems like an eternity.

Engadget is reporting that the new PlayStation 4 console from Sony will not allow you to transfer all of those PlayStation Network games you might have purchased on the PS3. Sony admitted last night that current-generation PSN titles won't be playable on the system because architecture of the Power-PC-based PS3 and x86-64 based AMD processor powering the PlayStation 4 are so different.

Tonight is the night that Sony will make some sort of announcement about the future of the PlayStation brand. Some speculate that it will be more details on their next system, commonly referred to as the "PS4." Hopefully there will be some other surprises like game announcements, new features for the technology they already have on the market now and - with any luck - a price cut to the North American and European versions of the PS Vita hand-held - which currently cost as much as a brand new PS3.

The United Kingdom has levied a fine of £250,000 against Sony for the PlayStation Network security breach that occurred in 2011 that put the personal information of 77 million customers at risk, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced. The government's agency in charge of data protection called the Sony security breach a "serious breach of the Data Protection Act" and note that - if Sony's security had been up to date - the attack "could have been prevented."

Episode 5 of Telltale's horror adventure series The Walking Dead based on the popular comic series took the top spot on the PlayStation Store charts for the month of November, according to Sony. In fact all five episodes in the series managed to make the Top 20. Coming is second was Assassin's Creed 3, followed by Sonic Adventure 2, Okami HD, and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.

The creative team behind Adult Swim's Robot Chicken animated show detail a special episode of the show on the PlayStation Blog. The special episode, airing tonight at 10 PM ET during the Adult Swim mature cartoon block on Cartoon Network - features an imaginative PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale skit. Apparently Sony approached the Robot Chicken folks to create this special episode:

Sony has released full details on the PS Vita firmware update 2.00 which is hitting Europe today and was pushed out to North American PS Vita owners yesterday. The update adds some new features to the hand-held and offers a ton of tweaks.

In Episode 29 of the Super Podcast Action Committee hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss the shaky launch of the Wii U console over the weekend, Sony perma-bans for PS3 'hackers,' and the good and bad side of Electronic Arts. It's a show to remember unless you stopped that Wii U firmware update - then it's a painful reminder that getting your brand new console 'bricked' kind of sucks! Download it now: SuperPAC Episode 29 (1 hour, 19 minutes) 73 MB.

Multi-platform TV and movie streaming service Crackle today unveiled a new PlayStation 3 application, making its full suite of ad-supported, full-length movies, television series and original programming more easily accessible to all PlayStation 3 users in the United States and Canada. Along with the PS3 App, Crackle recently re-launched on Sony Entertainment Network (SEN), offering a "premium user-experience" to those accessing Crackle from Sony Connected Devices such as BRAVIA TVs and Blu-ray players.

Sony has begun taking steps to secure the PlayStation Network to deal with the threat of the PS3 lv0 boot loader key leak and the ability for hacked consoles to play online alongside legitimate users.

Last week we detailed a new hack for the PlayStation 3 that has some in the PlayStation Network concerned that they could face another major security breach like what happened back in 2011 when millions of users' information was compromised by hackers. But security firm GFI Software says that PSN users shouldn't be all that concerned about it.

Sony's PlayStation 3 is facing a new security threat - one it hasn't seen since the system was cracked via the PSJailbreak in 2011. According to a report on Eurogamer, a new PlayStation Network-enabled custom firmware was recently released along with the publication of the console's LV0 decryption keys.

A federal judge has dealt a class action lawsuit filed in early 2012 against Sony several blows that have seriously hindered their plans to take Sony to task for the 2011 security breach on the PlayStation Network, Qriocity, and Sony Online Entertainment.

It looks like Sony has decided that it will no longer support Stanford University's Folding@home distributed computing project via PlayStation 3. According to a post in the European PlayStation Blog, Sony will kill the ability for current and future PS3 owners to contribute part of the CPU power to the project with the next firmware update scheduled to go live sometime later this month. Sony didn't really give a reason why they have decided to do this...