Something to keep in mind is that it's becoming a trend that companies sell the systems at a loss (Notably, I think the only company that doesn't is Nintendo). Especially for the beginning of it's life, this is only practical if it's a closed system - Because if it wasn't, then they're essentially just offering the hardware at a huge discount to people who have no intention of buying any games, and the games is where they're going to make their revenue.
I don't know if Sony every actually said anything official, but I remember that being part of the reason why the 'Other OS' feature was removed from the PS3 - Places/People were buying them up and running Linux on them because they were such a good deal for the hardware.
I wouldn't want to bet money on my predictions, but I would say that if someone does build a platform like the PS4 that's open and can run Steam, it would cost a lot more for the consumer then the PS4 since it would probably be priced closer to the actual value of the hardware - And that would put off a lot of potential customers.
That said, there's an obvious chicken-and-egg problem in getting people to buy the system, and getting developers to develop for it, but having a cheaper system is definitely an advantage (Obviously, already being well-known to both developers and consumers is probably even more important). Regardless, if they had set the price of the PS4 at $1,000, it probably wouldn't be doing so hot right now.
but I remember that being part of the reason why the
'Other OS' feature was removed from the PS3 -
Places/People were buying them up and running Linux on
them because they were such a good deal for the hardware.
Wait, really? The PS3 was outclassed by generic PC hardware pretty quickly, and wasn't much faster than a netbook unless you were writing some seriously multithreaded or PS3 GPU-specific code. I never heard of many people buying them to run Linux and I don't remember any prominent open-source projects that targeted the PS3.
The real danger (for Sony) in opening up their consoles is the risk of piracy. That's a huge attack vector for hackers looking to defeat a console's copy protection scheme(s).
Sony's biggest nightmare is a world where teenagers can easily copy games because, as you say, that's where the real money is.
Looking into it, it seems it was more specialized uses that people were using them for, not just generic hardware - I remembered that point wrong. The fact that they foot the bill for a lot of the hardware is still true though.
Being able to easily copy and run games is an entirely fair point, but I felt it was separate from what I (And who I responded to) was getting at. An open-hardware machine running steam still has DRM on the games - And it's a bit of a given that most devs probably wouldn't want their games on platforms that didn't at-least try to have this (Though there are notable exceptions). Having open hardware, and having open software are really two different things, and it's a distinction that's only really come apparent in the later gen systems.
In the past, game systems were fairly close to being basically embedded systems, with the games running on the bare metal, so generally speaking having open-hardware in such a situation makes piracy much easier, because the only protections are in the hardware itself. Current gen systems actually have full OS's and a kernel-mode user-mode split, like a regular PC. Even if the hardware was open, without access to kernel-mode while the OS is running piracy isn't possible. I will concede that opening the hardware possibly creates an attack vector for the kernel though, so from that perspective it really isn't something that they want to have to deal with - And they don't gain anything from allowing it.
That said, if you look at Steam, AFAIK they have no real big issues with piracy. Why that's the case is debatable, but you can obviously make it work without having to lock-down the hardware.
It's not even that far in the past that these games were running on bare metal. The Nintendo Wii didn't have an OS running underneath the games, each piece of software had access to the entire range of memory and CPU unrestricted. I'm pretty sure the 3DS has a very minimal OS running underneath software.
Entirly true, it's kinda cool to see the evolution - Though it makes sense the games would run bare metal, since that would give the best bang-for-your-buck, and presumably it didn't matter at the time.
The 3DS actually has a somewhat complicated architecture - My understanding is that it has a dual-core CPU, but one core is dedicated to running the OS kernel, and the other is used for games. Thus, there is also a 'kernel-mode' 'user-mode' split in a way, because the core dedicated to running games doesn't have full access to everything, and doesn't have full access to mess with the other core. You can kinda see this in action when you note that the 3DS can only ever have one game running at a time, but certain home-screen applications can be run while a regular game is suspended - Due to the application running off of the OS kernel's core and not the game's core.
This also means that an exploit in a game doesn't automatically result in full-system control - A separate exploit in the kernel is necessary to gain full control over the system. This is completely different from the Wii's setup as you noted - I'm not sure if the Wii had the OS running while games did or not, but regardless since games ran with full privileges a single exploit in a game resulted in full-system control.
> The PS3 was outclassed by generic PC hardware pretty quickly
I agree here. Running Yellow Dog Linux [0] on my PS3 was a fun weekend project, but it never came close to replacing my dedicated computer. I didn't even notice the update that removed it, which in hindsight could have been pretty bad had I used it more.
People were not running Linux on PS3 for desktop/server usage. They were running it there for scientific computations. This was before GPGPU (cuda/opencl) became better price/performance choice.
Interesting. I found more about this on Wikipedia [0]. As a tech hobbyist with a PS3 in my teens, I was genuinely interested in a desktop replacement. I shared this interest with others in my cohort at the time.
I would argue that the "loss leader" strategy has been part of the game for both Sony and MSFT since they have entered the video game console, forcing SEGA out of the hardware market.
I don't know if Sony every actually said anything official, but I remember that being part of the reason why the 'Other OS' feature was removed from the PS3 - Places/People were buying them up and running Linux on them because they were such a good deal for the hardware.
I wouldn't want to bet money on my predictions, but I would say that if someone does build a platform like the PS4 that's open and can run Steam, it would cost a lot more for the consumer then the PS4 since it would probably be priced closer to the actual value of the hardware - And that would put off a lot of potential customers.
That said, there's an obvious chicken-and-egg problem in getting people to buy the system, and getting developers to develop for it, but having a cheaper system is definitely an advantage (Obviously, already being well-known to both developers and consumers is probably even more important). Regardless, if they had set the price of the PS4 at $1,000, it probably wouldn't be doing so hot right now.