Having been rumoured for months, a premium service for the PlayStation Network was announced at Sony’s E3 conference.

Titled “PlayStation Plus”, the new premium service will be in addition to the current free version of the PSN. Plus will grant users access to “hundreds of dollars worth of content” including early demo, priority access to betas, exclusive content, discounts and wealth of free content. There will also be automatic downloads and patches all for the price of $49.99 for a years subscription. Anything you get from free during your subscription will only be accessible to play whilst you have a valid subscription.

PlayStation Plus will release worldwide on the 29th June and will see the first three months available for free.

Update: The official site is now live and a trailer for the service has been released.