[ToucanLoucan]

I often wonder what the ROI is on this. How much did Sony have to pay engineers to implement this interesting but seemingly pretty useless functionality vs. what it actually saved them in the aforementioned tariffs? I know the knee jerk reaction is to say it obviously saved them some money or they wouldn't have done it, but I've seen far too much corporate stupidity in my life to take that as a given. I'd love to see the data.

[rsynnott]

Well, in the end it didn't save them anything, because the EC didn't accept that having a toy basic interpreter made what was obviously a games console a PC. I can't imagine it was terribly expensive in the scheme of things, though.

[throwaway48476]

If it can run a desktop linux environment it's a PC. That said it probably should only count if the preinstalled software is Linux and not some games OS.

[Y_Y]

I would say that a PC should be compatible with the software and hardware of the IBM 5150.

[ngcc_hk]

Apple mac not a personal computer ?

[pwg]

When you ship millions of units of the kit, you only need a small savings per unit for the sum total to become a big enough saving to be noticeable to the financial dept. bean counters.

[PetitPrince]

Maybe it was just a passion project for the engineers or even Ken Kutaragi ? See also Net Yarose, Linux For Playstation 2, Other OS & Yellow Dog Linux for Playstation 3.

[spookie]

For sure, they had very interesting architectures. Used even in supercomputers as a number of them in parallel