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Comment by pjmlp

5 hours ago

This is what killed Linux support on PS as well, Sony was disappointed with what was being done with PS2Linux, instead of indie titles.

Hence why PS3 Other OS no longer did hardware acceleration.

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pjmlp

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beAbU  5 hours ago

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.

  • AlphaAndOmega0  4 hours ago

    I 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.

    • mr_toad  2 hours ago

      Nearly 90 million units by the time it was discontinued, but I'm not sure how many were sold at the point they removed Linux support.

  • monocasa  4 hours ago

    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.

Keyframe  4 hours ago

Linux 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.

  • philistine  1 hour ago

    Linux on Playstation was the final hubris of Ken Kutaragi to have his insane CPU design take over computing. Kutaragi envisaged the PS3 becoming a standard hardware platform similar to the PC but fully controlled by Sony. That was their goal with the PS3, they said so themselves time and time again. The second Kutaragi was removed from power over at Playstation, they closed the Other OS function.

    It was the last time that a Japanese company made a fundamentally Japanese move.