[According to well-placed industry sources, PlayStation HUB will offer PlayStation 3 owners much the same services as Xbox Live, including chat, downloadable demos, independent games and online play. It's a departure from PlayStation 2's online strategy, widely regarded as vastly inferior to Microsoft's.

PlayStation HUB is being described to developers as a 'subscriber service' suggesting a monthly charge. We understand the service is being created by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, although this is unconfirmed.

September launch

Developer sources are also suggesting that PlayStation 3 is currently scheduled to launch in September. A launch games release schedule seen by our sources states a September launch. Although the schedule does not explicitly state a hardware launch date, nor a launch territory, we understand Japan and U.S will both see the machine in September.

Some in the industry have taken this as a lead to speculate that September 16 would be a launch date in Japan (a Saturday before a national holiday) followed by September 21 in the U.S. These dates are not confirmed.]

Though nothing is official yet, Next Generation is a highly respected news site and I doubt they would publish this info unless their source was reliable. Sony is supposedly preparing to announce HUB some time in the next few weeks.

Source: Next Generation