[mythtv-users] PS3 keys

[Richard Morton]

On 17 January 2011 16:17, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Nick Rout" <nick.rout at gmail.com>
>
>> In reality isn't this crack likely to result in greater hardware sales
>> for Sony?
>
> Perhaps, but whether that's germane to Sony depends on whether *they're
> making a profit on sales of the console proper*; it's an old, well known,
> and fairly stupid business model to give away razors and sell blades.
>

There are some pertinent points to this:
1. Sony sold PS3 with an other OS option; enabling clustered
supercomputing usage, which would never generate follow on sales of
games to make the systems profitable. Therefore they had accepted that
they would make a loss on units that were used for this purpose; they
obviously decided the number of users that would do this would be
small, even after the publicity and press-releases showing the prowess
of the consoles; in fact they probably benefited from the halo effect.

2. Sony removed the option from game consoles previously sold;
breaking the contract they made with the consumer.

3. Whether the law provides the seller after the point of sale of
controlling the usage of a sold device. That's like saying that I'll
sell you bolts and nuts as long as you only use them for the
construction of bridges which use jelly instead of concrete. Once a
product is sold, it is the owners responsibility to use as directed if
they want warranty/support otherwise the owner can do as they wish at
their own risk. I don't see why big corporations or judges think
consoles should be any different.

Rich