The alternative is to never connect to WiFi, ever, and some do that.
Generally, consumers would want to downgrade because older versions have vulnerabilities that are fixed in newer versions. these vulnerabilities allow console owners to do what they want with their hardware, and gaming communities have shown Nintendo time and time again that if it is possible to use game hardware for game piracy, it will be widely used for that purpose.
Those of us who want a neat standardized hardware platform to hack on without pirating anything are in the noise floor for companies like Nintendo, so we have no representation among neither pirates nor the console manufacturer.
Most TVs have efuses to stop software rollback.
In that case it isn’t about access to pirated content either—people want to be able to modify it for basic features the company has neglected to provide.
Nintendo is just greedy.
Many of their new games are still good.
And, of course, there's plenty of competition in both hardware capable of running games and in games themselves, so it's not like Nintendo has a monopoly. (And it's pretty well known up-front to customers that Nintendo likes to keep a tight grip. So it's not like people don't know what's coming.)
Is there a feature that the Game Boy had that the Game Boy Color lacked? Nope. GBA did drop the infrared port that was barely used by GBC games but my PS3 also can't use my PS1 memory cards nor can an Xbox One use a 360 memory card or the HD-DVD drive. And Series X lacks Kinect or HDMI in support. Poorly used or outdated features often go away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Advance_SP#Headphone_...
The flash cart also added some really neat features that were missing, such as: the ability to take screenshots, ability to save and restore a game at any point, ability to load cheats like infinite ammo and such.
Nintendo was/is at war with cart users and any update to a DS with a flash cart stood a good chance of either killing the flash cart or rendering it inoperable until a new firmware was released for the flash cart (which may never happen). There's a long and great history here. And if you want to know more, the GBATemp wiki[3] is a great starting point.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_cartridge [1] https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/3DS_Flashcart_Comparison [3] https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/Category:Nintendo_DS
Examples:
Sony removed Linux OtherOS from the Playstation 3 firmware because even though it didn't have a GPU driver, they were worried it could be leveraged to do whatever. There is no value in running Linux on a PS3 today, but there was once.
Apple notably between iOS 6 and 7 changed their design language from skeuomorphic to flat white "metro" style. If you don't like staring at a glaring white screen, too bad. But more importantly, when it comes to drivers, esp. graphics, they can introduce eyestrain if something isn't as good. Issues with sound, networking, etc. for all sorts of platforms. The Intel Management Engine which is inside your PC (AMD has a counterpart) is a another CPU and another OS that you're not allowed to shut off (or access). Sometimes firmware updates will come out preventing you from rolling back to a previous version that didn't have a bug with the hardware in this or that because of the precious Intel ME backdoor.
The most famous example from my point of view:
Or to get back the features you had originally paid for but got removed, like Linux OS installs on PS3s.
Often you also first use stock before you learn about/want to start hacking it.
New games and game updates often require Switch system updates. Two examples:
Animal Crossing DLC requires a system update.
Rocket League seasons usually require a game update.
If you already have a game and it runs today on the current firmware you can at least keep playing it offline by just skipping the system or game update.
To prevent the use of older versions of the software, later versions of the software will burn fuses as they surpass versions, preventing them from ever being used again on that device.