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Comment by olliej | Hacker News Reader

So we're agreed that playstation, xbox, and Nintendo stores should also be regulated in the same way?

Yes, 100%. But the size of the corp dictates the priority of the action. That puts Apple and Microsoft at the top of the list.

Each of these platforms' value propositions from earlier days was that some day it'd profit from its own controlled ecosystem. This is how they got investment. Apple and Nintendo in particular each held out a long time protecting the brand. There'd be no point in doing that if you're forced to support the competition anyway.

And in each of these markets, users have other options if they want full hardware control. Clearly it wasn't a priority for many of them.

There's a long runway from "early market" to "total domination" to make money for investors. Nobody is shutting down the ability of limited or emerging markets to extract value, but once you reach Apple's size it's an entirely different story.

The runway is less than one human generation, or less than a home mortgage period. Some of these ventures are unprofitable for a decade. If an investor isn't thinking domination early on, they're thinking of getting it to the point where another investor would think that.

Perhaps profits-at-the-expense-of-everything-else is _not_ the right way we should be running the show.

Perhaps it is. The EU can see if their way helps them, though.

If you really believe that, I'm not sure what to say.

So you can cheat against console players? Every device capable of doing computing doesn't need to be regulated as a general purpose computer.

I’ve yet to see any company solve the cheating problem in any game. People forget that Valve gave up on the ring0 stuff not because it was unpopular, but because it stopped being effective.

It is not necessarily about "solving" but more about minimizing. I encounter far fewer cheaters on the few consoles I do game on than on the online PC games I play, largely because the barrier of entry to doing cheats on those consoles are much higher. It is not impossible to run cheats on the console but requiring hardware mods, not being able to run certain patch levels, risking blacklisting that hardware identifier, etc. mean far fewer people are willing to do it compared to just running another executable on your computer before you launch the game.

Yes, as they are general computing devices I use widely for my everyday computing, and I should have complete control over all software I put on them!

Game consoles are often used as examples of special-purpose computers, in contrast to general-purpose computers.

Why? Why should every device that is capable be forced to be capable? This is such a wide held assumption in tech circles. Why is it not good enough that there are devices that allow that while other companies pursue a different business model? I do not see the upside of catering to techie’s entitlement to using every device as they see fit. I certainly see the downside of limiting what business models companies can purse. As as been pointed out it isn[t clear that companies like Nintendo would have been able to make what they have in that regime. And there’s no question that the trajectory of the iPhones would have been different as well.

It is so frustrating to constantly hear that a popular device should be forced to work a different way. The typical reasons given are inevitably tied up with piracy, porn, and techbro condescension revolving around how people should adapt their usage to accommodate their technical superiors. Why can’t people that demand that they should be able to do whatever they want on their device simply use the devices that allow that?

I'm not fond of calling people names, but yes, for all the times I've heard this, nobody has convinced me of why every piece of hardware and software needs to be forcibly open-source or whatever.

Priorities! Sure yes we should fix them but they are so far down the list of goals we focus on important issues first.

Why not focus on Apple? That will give Sony, MS and Nintendo some lesson.

No, because they are gaming consoles, not (Very) Personal Computers.

If that can stop that argument yeah why not, lets open markets.

Yes.

Always the same whataboutism in these threads. Do we have to solve all things at once, or do you hold some weird belief that the world must be absolutely fair?

For what it's worth I would answer your question with yes, but this question has no bearing on this thread.

It's already perfect. Those game console-makers etc get to run their platforms the way they want, I get to choose what to buy, and I'm glad that this will probably never meaningfully change.

Yes!

That would be great.

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