Comment by doublerabbit
6 days ago
I don't, your forced under the mercy of that they keep supporting. At any time they can render your console usless and force you to upgrade.
Consoles are e-waste in my eyes, perfectly good for other uses but liocked to what the vendor wants to give. Limited by the hardware that's given and then nagged to buy latest model.
Why am I not allowed to turn an old PS4 in to a Linux router? It has a beast of a CPU, USB ports and suports SSD's, what's the issue?
> Why can't I turn an old PS4 in to a Linux router?
I simply sell my game consoles when I'm done with them.
They would make terrible Linux routers, even if they were unlocked.
Sure, you can do that. However the taste knowing that I will soon be nagged to update with less features working makes it a waste, I paid $$$ for it.
Shouldn't I be allowed to repurpose it for other uses than just a console when it becomes EOL?
> Shouldn't I be allowed to repurpose it for other uses than just a console when it becomes EOL?
Yes, once hardware becomes some kind of end-of-use, end-of-support, or end-of-life (exactly what, to-be-determined), the brand should be required to unlock any aspect that hasn't already been unlocked, so that people can reuse the hardware. (And maybe put the unlocks in escrow before then, in case the brand goes out of business.)
There are also situations in which hardware should be unlocked while within use and support. But probably not for a given gaming device, or not in a way that permits that hardware be used as the gaming device while unlocked.
Gaming consoles are a very rare thing that I want locked down, as long as I am sharing whatever pool of online gamers that device accesses. (Because online gaming has way too many people who haven't yet learned to play well with others, and cheating in multiplayer games is a thing that many do.)
And the fact that I have less control and ownership of a gaming device is one of the reasons why I use a dedicated device for gaming, and also isolate it on the guest VLAN.
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