You won't have to pay a fee to stream and record footage on the PS4, Sony SNE +0.35% Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida confirmed on Twitter yesterday. Anxious fans had begun to ask Yoshida about that, after it became clear the Microsoft MSFT +2.58% wouldn't be giving away those services on Xbox One, and he responded definitely. It certainly would have been awkward if the share button on the PS4 controller was only available for an extra fee.

Sony and Microsoft's subscriber services - Playstation Plus and Xbox Live Gold, respectively - will look awfully similar when the new consoles launch in the fall. Sony will start to charge for online multiplayer, which it didn't do with the PS3, and Microsoft is now offering free games with a Gold subscription, just like with Playstation Plus. As with most stories in the next-gen, this is about two seemingly different ideas meeting in the middle.

Sony still offers more services for free than Microsoft, the new DVR feature notwithstanding, while Microsoft reserves most online functionality for Gold members. It does offer more partnerships and services once you fork over the fee, but legions of Netflix NFLX +0.53%-watchers find themselves paying $60 a year for a service they’re already buying from another company.

In the great internet shouting match that typifies the next-gen console war at this moment, this sort of news offers more ammunition for the pro-Sony crowd, albeit not much more. Such news pieces illustrate the massive perception problem that Xbox One has with gamers right now - it can seem like every story in the gaming blogosphere plays into the same general narrative: Sony is out to give you what you want, Microsoft is out to screw you