The PS3 was incredible value dollar-to-flop, given that it was sold at a loss. This resulted in universities and other research institutes buying them en masse to create supercomputer clusters. Naturally buying thousands of consoles but not a single game puts sony in a difficult position. Although I think it's sad the hardware got locked down in later revisions, I fully understand why they did it.
replyThe US Department of Defense went quite a bit further. They created the Condor Cluster in 2010 which was comprised of 1760 PS3s. At the time it was placed 33rd worldwide for a supercomputer.
replyhttps://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomput...
The marketing win of being able to say "these are so poweful, the military literally uses them in supercomputers" certainly more than makes up for a hundredth of a percent of consoles having a zero attach rate.
replyI would be curious to know more precise numbers. My intuition suggests that when Sony sells millions of them, the number diverted for non-gaming purposes is maybe thousands or tens of thousands.
replyLinux on playstation was a play by Sony not to have customs like on a toy but as a more favorable computer merchandise. They didn't care.
replyNope, that was with YA BASIC.
replyThere were different customs for different countries targetted with different tactics.
replyYa basic was only one front in that war.