Conspiracy Saturday one day earlier edition: Is Corporate Espionage behind PSN Shutdown?

If you are a PS3 owner you are one of many millions shut off from Sony's online playground "PSN".  Sony's PSN online service has been shutdown coincidently since 4/20/2011.  April 20th(aka:420) is a date synonymous with many evil's, bastardly deeds and of course "Pot" Weed, Mary Jane, and Ganja.  Adolf Hitler was born on 4/20/1889, Columbine High School shooting was 4/20/1999, Serbian army bombs hospital in Goradze Bosnia, 47 killed 4/20/1994, France declares war on Austria, Prussia and Sardinia 4/20/1792 and 4/20/1941 one hundred German bombers attack Athens.


Now 4/20/2011 will be a day etched in stone as the day Sony pulled the plug on it's PSN online services due to "External Intrusion".  According to Patrick Seybold Sr. Director, Corporate Communications &  Social Media: "An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th. Providing quality entertainment services to our customers and partners is our utmost priority. We are doing all we can to resolve this situation quickly, and we once again thank you for your patience. We will continue to update you promptly as we have additional information to share.

This has been a very contentious, bitter and extremely costly console war between Sony and Microsoft. Sony's has just announced that they've hit the 50 million mark, trailing just slightly behind Microsoft's Xbox 360. With Microsoft's sales number's heavily tinted because of the RROD fiasco and the slow demise of the core-gaming experience; Sony's momentum needs to be slowed to a grinding halt.

Microsoft has thrown billions of dollars to attract timed exclusives and innovated technology to enhance it's core & motion gaming department.  But no matter how much money Microsoft spends and how many feature they cram unto Xbox LIVE it seems that Sony's PS3 with it's hefty price tag(obvious lack luster online service), is on pace to catch if not surpass Microsoft this year in global console sales.

When Microsoft released Window Phone 7 back in November 8th 2010 to a silent whimper.  News started to swirl a month or so later that Windows Phone 7 had been hacked, thereby enabling homebrew programs to be run on the platform and circumventing the Marketplace. 


So the guys who made it possible to run homebrew apps on the Marketplace-centric Windows Phone 7 platform got a nice piping hot cup of coffee and a fun little t-shirt to their wardrobe? But is that all?

While giving away t-shirts to people that hack your code isn’t the way  Apple or Sony would roll, it certainly seems to be the future for Microsoft who seem to be engaging with their computer savvy users in a whole new slightly disturbing way since the release of Windows Phone 7.

Now, this new yet strange and twisted relationship with the Hacking community may have benefited Microsoft in a huge and unexpected ways.  


Could these new found friends Microsoft has embraced be behind the current PSN outage?   Could this have been sanction by Microsoft to help slow the momentum Sony is currently high on? Is the outage an act by the shady for the "people" group" called "anonymous".  Or was it a single splinter from that group?  Only time and Sony of Japan engineers will shed some light on what will be Sony's 4/20 debacle.

Share your thoughts; could it be Corporate Espionage or some lone wolf with a sick twisted vendetta against Sony?