I do believe that Sony approached Microshaft when the PS3 and XBOX 360 were just coming out with a proposal to have cross console online play. if memory serves MS turned down Sony's offer with a counter that any PS3 user that wanted to Play Xbox players online would have to sign up and PAY to have an XBOX live account, in order to play on the Microsoft servers, but Xbox players would get to play on the Sony servers for FREE because we don't pay for online services. they never came to an agreement and it died.