I’m not defending them removing the functionality and I agree it was sold with a feature, that should have been supported. I just think we didn’t see the Other OS option continue through the generations because the hardware’s price point was taken advantage of.
Sony could have imposed a fee to unlock Other OS, but I don’t think anyone would have felt better shelling out an additional $400 to use it. Situation becomes then home customer gets no value from it, businesses are no longer incentivized to buy playstations, and Sony has to continue supporting this thing that few people are paying to access.
First of all, I think every “pay to unlock the capabilities of the hardware you already bought” is literally criminal (and by “literally” I mean “actually literally, not figuratively, and the FTC is failing to do its job by not prosecuting it”) no matter how much it gets normalized. Second, in this particular case it was unlocked from the get-go by default, so Sony would’ve had to forcibly lock it first and then try to charge for it, which would’ve been somehow even more blatantly criminal!
The real alternative here would’ve been for Sony to take the fucking L and comply with the law. They could’ve revised future units to not support OtherOS (as they, in fact, did), but forcibly removing it from units that had already been sold was absolutely beyond the pale and should’ve been stopped.
I’m not defending them removing the functionality and I agree it was sold with a feature, that should have been supported. I just think we didn’t see the Other OS option continue through the generations because the hardware’s price point was taken advantage of.
Sony could have imposed a fee to unlock Other OS, but I don’t think anyone would have felt better shelling out an additional $400 to use it. Situation becomes then home customer gets no value from it, businesses are no longer incentivized to buy playstations, and Sony has to continue supporting this thing that few people are paying to access.
No, that’s extortion, which is also a crime.
First of all, I think every “pay to unlock the capabilities of the hardware you already bought” is literally criminal (and by “literally” I mean “actually literally, not figuratively, and the FTC is failing to do its job by not prosecuting it”) no matter how much it gets normalized. Second, in this particular case it was unlocked from the get-go by default, so Sony would’ve had to forcibly lock it first and then try to charge for it, which would’ve been somehow even more blatantly criminal!
The real alternative here would’ve been for Sony to take the fucking L and comply with the law. They could’ve revised future units to not support OtherOS (as they, in fact, did), but forcibly removing it from units that had already been sold was absolutely beyond the pale and should’ve been stopped.