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In the past, Nintendo would likely not have had as much to worry about, as Nintendo has a habit of always selling their hardware at a profit. That said, I think the status quo of the industry means that every console manufacturer has to take security very seriously, for the following reasons. - Back catalog sold on newer platforms. Nintendo sells access to old games on new platforms. They want to charge you a few bucks to play the original Zelda, and for each additional game, not just allow you to throw on an emulator and hundreds of games and be done for free. - Available games and game developer targets. Developers choose what markets they want to target. Many already forego the Nintendo markets because they are generally underpowered compared to current gen hardware, and/or the cost benefit doesn't work out because there are less buyers for that type of game for Nintendo consoles. The gamer that wants to buy Dark Souls and has a Switch probably also has either a PS4 or an X-Box. Not preventing piracy of games makes this an even worse cost-benefit ratio, as you may end up subsidizing your game being wildy popular but largely unbought on Nintendo platforms if they don't. Look into the history of the Dreamcast. - For other console manufacturers, there's also the issue of recouping production cost. Licensed games pay a few bucks back the console manufacturer for each game sold, and they rely on this and sell the systems at a loss to help with market penetration. If a PS4 costs $350 to produce and sells for $300, you don't want people finding alternate uses or running unlicensed software (that doesn't kick back money) on them. You really don't want someone to produce some interesting free software that catches on so people start buying them just to run that software. That's money streaming out the door (I'm not sure if the PS4 or Xbox One are sold under cost at this point in the current generation, but I suspect not. Usually there ar later hardware revisions that make them more profitable to sell outright). So, really, it's just market economics and incentives. I do agree that limits on DRM would be in all our interests though. The only way I think the game companies would get on board with this (or more likely support it if forced to) would be to completely separate the "official" system and bios from the "general purpose" hardware access mode. That would still probably give hackers and crackers some clues about how to exploit the firmware, but may allow people to develop customized game console operating systems to run all the homebrew you want. Semi-useful for roo based systems, but actually fairly useful for mobile systems like the PSP, DS and Switch. |