Why is Sony so shady?

This is something that has bothered me periodically over the last couple of years. I admit I liked the PS2 but I kind of thought Sony lost the mission plan when the PS3 launched. They seemed to go the opposite direction of the PS2 and it left me perplexed. I mean the PS1 and PS2 literally dominated the market, the consoles were inexpensive, offered fun games, even if the graphics weren't the best. With the PS2 you got introduced to online through the add on they sold, and while it wasn't the best online system around it served it's purpose.

So even though I owned a Original Xbox, Gamecube and PS2, I did most of my gaming on the PS2. Now however I often ponder what Sony is thinking, they knock Nintendo for using motion controls and then release almost an exact copy of them themselves.

They refuse to release numbers when it comes to sales, and when they do release numbers they always release "Shipped" numbers instead of "Sold" numbers.

Even when they release numbers for their PSN accounts they aren't exactly accurate. Anyone who believes Sony has 75 unique users on PS3 is crazy. Correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty certain they are counting every account ever made on PS2, PS3 and PSP. Also I don't know a single person who doesn't have at least three PSN's. I personally have ten, seven American, one Japanese, One European and one Canadian. I got ten different PSN emails to ten different Email accounts I used to set those all up.

If everyone had two accounts, which is definitely underestimating things, then that means there is probably around 15-20 million unique accounts on PS3. I am not sure why I am the only one who realized this.

As a person who plays mostly XBL, I can safely say XBL has more unique players on Halo Reach per month then PSN has on all it's games combined. So why is Sony so shady with giving actual numbers of unique users? I understand 75 million probably sounds impressive, but you'd have to be pretty thick headed to believe those are all unique users.

Another shady detail is lack of reporting NPD numbers, never a good sign, especially if your an investor with the company. Yet Sony never reports sales domestically.

The other thing that burns my biscuits is what in the world does Sony consider a PS "Move" sale? Each wand? Navigation controller? PS EYE? Bundles? What is the actual attach rate? I believe if Sony is saying they sold 8 million Move's that the actual attach rate is around 3-4 million, maybe less if you take into account people buying another wand and Nav controller. Bottom line is there is no freaking way to track any of it accurately.

It's the same thing with actual Move games, most titles that use Move would sell well without Move support. So how do they track who buys the games to use with Move?

This latest PSN business just helped confirm my thoughts of Sony being one of the shadiest companies around. Waiting almost a full week to disclose that people's personal information was stolen including credit Card numbers.....it's really unacceptable.

I understand no company is 100% honest but it seems to me that Sony is taking their shady level to a place I don't like to go. It borders on illegal, your not allowed to fool investors to raise stocks and keeping quiet as to not cause stock to plummet is just as illegal.

I know I will get called fanboy and that's fine, but honestly trust is a huge thing with me, How many of you will trust Sony by keeping your credit card info on your PSN accounts now? I guess not many.

So you may try to act like nothing has changed, but things have indeed changed. This might even be the catalyst that Sony needs to start a pay to play service for everyone. I already suspected that Sony would do that next generation, but might start early to recoup all the money they are losing by being hacked and the inevitable law suits to follow.