Yeah, that's one thing I'm not going to like all that much about the PlayStation 4. My computer gets great online play.
Servers must exist for the companies that don't want to pay, though. And I guess that's what Sony hopefully have in mind. If I want to play an online fighting game, I can just go through Sony's servers rather than Arc System Work or Capcom or whomever. This means something like maybe a never disappearing servers for certain games like Demon's Souls 2.
Still, I'd rather pay per month on the PC for online and keeping servers up rather than through a console. I haven't run into too many server problems with the PC. So this, again, seems like mostly a console problem. And if the problem ever hit the PC, I'd gladly pay to keep the servers of a game that I like up and running.
I don't really know the specifics, but this seems unnecessary. The PC is still better for online gaming, anyway. And I vastly prefer it. PC gaming has its limits. For instance, a lot of Japanese games, particularly single player offline ones, which are my favourite type of game, don't come nearly as often to PCs as consoles. On the other hand, paying a premium for something like online play, which PCs have already done well for free, for years, isn't any good.
To the defense of Sony, you can't really expect a better offer out of Microsoft. And PlayStation+ gives a lot of free games. I'd be happy to use PlayStation Plus just for the free games. All of the free games on PlayStation plus is really the closest console competitor to Steam.