To my knowledge none of the big three consoles allow you to install anything you want on them. They're "walled gardens" just as badly as Apple's ecosystem.
Game consoles are not general computing devices. Apple has aggressively and repeatedly marketed iOS devices as being for general-purpose computing. (Remember the "what's a computer" ads?)
If Apple wants to claim their devices are computer replacements, they should be regulated like it.
Proceeds to site one ad from 2018. Hyperbole really isn’t necessary here. And marketing determining how a product should be regulated is a sure fire way to encourage companies to get around regulation by changing your their marketing.
Prepare for the PS6 to cost $1200 then. The hardware is sold at a loss, which I think justifies them being able to recoup their costs through selling software.
Honestly I don’t know why people think they should be able to publish their software on anything anyways. I can see the iOS/android argument at least because they’re ubiquitous. But there is nothing wrong with how game consoles currently work. It’s a win for Sony/M$/Nintendo, game developers, and consumers. If it wasn’t, then games would only get released on PC (which already allows for exactly what you seem to be advocating for)
I'm less sure about Microsoft, my understanding is that the Series X is profitable and the Series S is a loss leader. However, both of them can be put into a developer mode and you can run your own (or other people's) code.
I mean, you're basically describing the mini-pc form factor. I'm not sure exactly where the steamdeck lies but the last couple of years these laptop CPU based systems have been pretty amazing for what they pack.
The one big (to me) advantage of the Steam Deck is that it's a static system, this way many games have a preset specifically for the deck, usually automatically applied on boot.
No need to spend hours adjusting settings and scouring the internet for That One Setting that will make it run smoothly.
Even CP2077 runs great out of the box on it - and it's nigh-unplayable on PS4 level hardware.
Sure, go for it. Price points won't change, consumers are only willing to pay so much for game systems, so we'll see just how close to the FUD price the market will get. I doubt prices will change much if at all.
Sure, but that being said the 3DS, Wii, Wii U and Nintendo Switch all have enormous homebrew communities. It's nowhere near Sony's OtherOS levels of support, but the board does have functioning CPU/GPU drivers and can run pretty much "anything" you'd expect from an Aarch64 Linux target.
It's more of a technical nuance in the Switch's case, but homebrew on Nintendo consoles is a time-honored tradition.
To my knowledge none of the big three consoles allow you to install anything you want on them. They're "walled gardens" just as badly as Apple's ecosystem.