Comment by GuB-42

Consumers but game consoles to play games made for the consoles, and as long as they can play, why should they care about firmwares and bootloaders? In fact, I know plenty of Linux kernel recompiling geeks with custom built PCs who buy locked down game consoles because sometimes, they just want to play video games, and game consoles are really good at making it hassle free.

And the fact that they are locked down is not a bad thing. It actually made Nintendo's success. While other manufacturers had to deal with a flood of poor quality titles, Nintendo was able to set quality standards. As for the evil DRM, game publisher sometimes don't want to release games on open platforms (like PC) because of piracy.

Your car analogy doesn't hold, you don't need to change oil and wiper fluid in your consoles, consoles are essentially no maintenance and that's another good thing about them. And in fact, the most likely maintenance operation you may have to do on the Switch is changing the battery, and it is a relatively easy operation. I don't know how long my Switch will last, but consoles tend to last a really long time for consumer electronics.

Game consoles may be computers under the hood, and with hacks, you may turn them into a general purpose machines (and I have done it, it is fun). But really, they are accessories to the games. You are not "darn ignorant" because you buy a console for its intended purpose. Yes it is a toy, literally, you find it it toy stores, but why should you buy a different toy just because it may not do more than advertised?