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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

I don’t agree with that explanation of the gaming console exception. Modern consoles are actually quite similar to smartphones in the breadth of their functionality. To be consistent I think you’d need to include consoles, most smart TVs and media streamers, and even tech-heavy cars.

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My concern with phones isn't really that they're general-purpose per se, but that they're many people's primary computer--if not their only computer. Game consoles don't have that level of importance in our lives.

Gaming consoles aren't general purpose computers. You're not going to do banking, email your boss, find a lover, or order groceries from them. They're unnecessary leisure commodities.

There are also three major consoles, PC, Steam, and a ton of other ways to distribute games. It's a highly competitive landscape. If you want a phone, you've got only two options.

DOJ, burn the Apple and Google monopolies to the ground.

I think gaming consoles are general purpose computers. You listed a few things that probably aren't done very often on consoles (although you likely can do them, since consoles have web browsers). But it's also easy to list things that are much better-suited to be done on a gaming console than a smartphone.

> I think gaming consoles are general purpose computers.

This is a contrived point of view, and I'm sure the product managers at Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and Google would all strongly disagree.

Remember when the PS3 used to be used for super computing? Sony quietly ended that program when they realized that wasn't the business they wanted to be in.

I don't mean that consoles are the best device to do any computing task. Of course they aren't, and of course smartphones also are not. I'm also not making some technical claim, like that they are Turing complete (of course they are, but that's not really relevant). What I mean is that I do not consider modern consoles to be "single-purpose computers." They're more like "the computer for your living room," and they can and often do handle all sorts of media/entertainment and communication/socializing (which, let's be honest, is a huge part of what smartphones do). They can also handle home automation. If you consider "anything you would want to do on your living room TV" to be a single purpose, then sure, but you could construct the same definition for a smartphone.

> If you want a phone, you've got only two options.

That's not true at all. There's 2 primary OS choices, but on the Android side there's dozens of manufacturers, all with their take on things. Android is not a single option, it's hundreds. You even have choice of app stores. There's even options that have zero Google at all - like the Huawei P40 Pro. Or for an older take, silent cirlce's Blackphone or Amazon's Fire Phone. And even if you are in the very small minority that actually buys a Google phone, they even provide instructions on how to unlock the bootloader & flash a different OS: https://source.android.com/setup/build/running#unlocking-rec...

Android if Google as far as I am concerned, for now. Lets hope Huawei gets it's store off the ground fast. But for now: no Google Play Service, and Android is a brick.

Consoles are very different from phones. Consoles sell at a loss and make the money back in sales. The 30% cut to the console makers goes towards paying for the lower price of hardware. Google and Apple do not sell phones below cost.

The certification process for consoles is also a lot tougher and more expensive.

Games for consoles are sold in many different stores, I don't know why that's even being brought up.

I think the point is that console game’s code has to be signed by the console manufacturer or the console simply won’t run the code at all.

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