As we have been telling you previously, sources are whispering to us that Sony will take the wraps off of its plan to add a pay for access tier to its PSN network. This new pay tier will likely add a premium content tier (much like Xbox Live’s Gold membership level) to the Playstation Network.

According to the news from our shadow dwellers, this pay subscription tier will be different from the Microsoft offering, as it will not take away any services that PSN users currently have; but instead will offer additional services and features that will only be available to those users on the pay tier of the service. According to our sources, Sony may be offering a choice of a free download from a set of specific offerings each month as a bonus to those who are subscribers, for example.

Despite rumors suggesting that the upcoming “cross-game-voice-chat” addition to the service will require access to the pay or premium tier access, our sources seem to think that this will not be the case. Sony is said to still be ironing out all of the details, and while our sources say that the announcement will come this year, some are not 100% sure that Sony will be ready to announce it at E3. We will have to wait and see what happens, but we suspect that if Sony is going to make such a radical shift as to offer a pay tier for PSN, it will want to at least announce it at E3.