There is a perfectly reasonable debate to be had about bootloader unlocking, sideloading and consumer choice, but this is not that debate. The issue here is fundamentally about someone intentionally deceiving a business partner.
Sidebar: There are no shortage of tablet-ish computers that will run arbitrary code. The Joy-Con controllers are class-compliant and will work with any Bluetooth host. There are open alternatives, but a lot of people buy the Switch specifically because it offers a curated experience with clear age ratings and effective parental controls.
To meaningfully contribute to the debate on walled gardens, it is first necessary to acknowledge their relative popularity compared to open platforms. If walled gardens were universally and unconditionally bad, it is implausible that they would have such broad market acceptance. In the case of Nintendo, this issue is particularly acute - many informed observers credit the NES10 chip and the Nintendo Seal of Quality with saving the video games industry.
Getting approval to develop for the Switch is much harder.
You can buy Wii U and 3DS dev kits right away, though. And boy they are EXPENSIVE.
The switch is completely thoroughly irreversibly jailbroken at the hardware level already. I don't think the secret purpose was to be a jailbreak.
This has been fixed in hardware revisions since about a year ago. Getting a unit that is vulnerable to the so-called RCM exploit has become increasingly difficult.
(The boot9strap exploit against the 3DS, on the other hand, was never fixed. One wonders why.)
This has got to be a joke.
There's a few lines here that need to be drawn somewhere. Nintendo sells access to a platform to developers. It's not unreasonable that they aren't allowed free reign to control what's run; at some point one developers free reign would conflict with anothers.
Should the consumer have free control over what's running on their hardware? Perhaps. Let's for the sake of argument assume yes.
Then how should Nintendo and third party developers deal with hackers? Completely cut their access to Nintendo/game services? Now they have a brick.
The lines drawn for developers and consumers with respect to game consoles make sense and generally work for all involved.
I think your point has legs in other contexts (i.e. Apple products, right to repair, etc) just not here. If people feel differently they should vote with their dollars, but managed walled gardens will always be greener in some aspects.
These are truly walled gardens. Worse, these walled gardens are monopolies that can and are abused by large companies.
So, either people are painfully stupid or a managed platform has some appeal over free ones.
Continuity, ease of use, various warranties/guarantees make walled gardens attractive. If consumers have free reign and brick their device, it's hard to expect the manufacturer to have/honor any warranty. If developers have free reign there's no guarantee another application won't break theirs or that they won't break someone else's... or that it'll work with whatever the consumer is doing.
Yes, an obvious counter point is *nix systems, but there is some authority in that ecosystem which keeps most things working. It's still not painless to setup/use which prevents it from effectively competing with windows/Mac OS.
Simply put, the price of admission into a walled garden comes with some perks/guarantees/warranties which aren't readily available elsewhere.
What I had in mind was more a long the lines that windows/Mac OS isn't transparent and the consumer has limited control over what it's doing and how to implement things. Furthermore their official app stores are a walled garden of sorts.
Consumers/developers have a good deal of freedom on these platforms and with that comes breakage in various forms. Malware, instability, etc. And to deal with that you have repair shops/programs. System resets, fresh installs etc. Maintenance becomes a responsiblity of the consumer.
Like I said, the lines can move based on context. Moving the needle further towards freedom for developers/consumers gets you *nix systems - which is harder for your average consumer to maintain/use. Moving away gets you iphones/consoles, etc which "just work" and flaws in software/hardware handled by the manufacturer.
[1] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/15276/is-this-us...
https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/26/rein-or-reign...
But still understandable with the kind of context - "take the reins" and "take the reigns" would be imply "take control", no? (Sure, it's clunky, but that's English for you.)
Small nit - you probably mean "outside of using them to play Nintendo-approved games" since there's only 2 Nintendo games on the Switch here and 6 non-Nintendo games.
By providing something like OtherOS, you remove the incentive for that group to crack your console.
It is fairly telling that the PS3 was only cracked after OtherOS was removed.
As I recall, ultimately Hotz managed to compromise the device's root key, and Sony determined that it was impossible to protect the key (after replacing it) as long as OtherOS continued to exist.
I don't know what you mean here. You can play the latest Mortal Kombat on the Switch, too.
Nintendo keeps providing excellent gaming experience that no one else does. Super Mario Odyssey is awesome not because it's the same old Mario guy from NES, but because it is just a great game.
Nintendo games are not polluted by the games-as-service and free-to-play monetization mindsets as badly as other platforms.
I don't like a lot of their rigidity, such as takedowns or still not getting rid of having stuff segregated by regions, but I appreciate what they contribute to the world of video games.
But why does this have to do with draconian lock-down rules? Presumably, allowing homebrew code is not gonna affect the above at all.
When I want something with solid gameplay that doesn't just sell because the graphics are so good (or whatever marketing flavour of the month is in vogue at the moment), a Nintendo console is what I go to.
But if i want to produce homebrew for my own machine, I'd have to get permission from nintendo. I also have to pay for that priviledge, when the hardware is something i have purchased.
You say this and there was certainly a time when I would have agreed with you. Sadly, the reality doesn't match that belief so I no longer think that is the case.
See that is nostalgia talking.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SwitchPirates/comments/9lspva/compl...
You are overstating its use, however.
I worked for a game division of Sony at the time, and we were furious at the mothership for that incident.