The death of otherOS was entirely to do with the fact it facilitated a lot of the reverse engineering efforts on the PS3, nothing else. As others correctly note, this was largely in response to George Hotz's hacking which required otherOS. Sony actually exposed themselves to legal action in many countries by selling a customer a product with an advertised feature then removing it after the fact, as such behaviour can often fall foul of sale of goods legislation.
Sony absolutely adored that supercomputer project if you lived through this period and followed the company; the idea that the cell processor was a supercomputer for the living room and we'd all be using our PS3s for media editing etc was genuinely a thought Sony had back then. It all fed into much of the (at times ridiculous) marketing for the Cell chip. Sony had plans for more Cell based devices that never materialized too.
"First, the company will manufacture a high-end workstation using the Cell CPU. Planned for release at the end of 2004... the Cell workstations will be marketed directly to the game and special-effects industries. The labor in their creation will be divided between Sony and IBM. SCE will develop middleware and other tools for game development and film effects. The Cell chips themselves will be manufactured by IBM, who will also work on the OS."
Sony absolutely adored that supercomputer project if you lived through this period and followed the company; the idea that the cell processor was a supercomputer for the living room and we'd all be using our PS3s for media editing etc was genuinely a thought Sony had back then. It all fed into much of the (at times ridiculous) marketing for the Cell chip. Sony had plans for more Cell based devices that never materialized too.
> https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-gives-glimpse-of-ps3-...
"First, the company will manufacture a high-end workstation using the Cell CPU. Planned for release at the end of 2004... the Cell workstations will be marketed directly to the game and special-effects industries. The labor in their creation will be divided between Sony and IBM. SCE will develop middleware and other tools for game development and film effects. The Cell chips themselves will be manufactured by IBM, who will also work on the OS."