> Do Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo allow other stores on their consoles?
Good idea, let's make that a requirement too. The law could be something like "if you sell a general purpose computing device, you're not allowed to mandate software vendor lockin". That would open up so many possibilities, it would be great for the people who own consoles.
Video game consoles are not general computing devices. Their controlled and curated walled gardens are part of the consumer appeal, and the absence of those would make consoles no different than PCs. If consumers wanted that they'd be buying PCs only.
Video game console are general computing devices. Their input & output tends to be limited (no keyboard nor mouse, at least by default), but they still run arbitrary programs (namely, any game).
One major, technical differences from PCs, is the uniformity of the hardware. This is becoming less true, but consoles traditionally have fixed hardware. No "works on my machine" problems on consoles. This also guarantees stable performance characteristics, that developers can optimise for. (This is less true now that consoles are resembling PCs more and more internally).
This is even more visible on older consoles: take an N64 (PS2), plug in a cartridge (insert a CD), and voilà you have your game, completely separated from any other program. Perhaps one of those programs could be GNU/Linux, but the default would still to be running on the bare metal, without interference from other programs. Quite unlike the PC there.
Incidentally, I could see a new game console solve the Thirty Million Lines Problem. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0031 Fixed, powerful hardware with a well defined interface could possibly trigger the OS competition that is so sorely lacking rights now: Windows, Linux, MacOS, IOS, Android, and if you pick a particular niche (Server, Mobile, Desktop), you'd rarely see more than 2 significant contenders.
Can you still say it runs arbitrary games if you need a license to be able to run them?
For example, is my microwave a general purpose computing device just because I can upgrade the firmware, even if the firmware has to be signed by the manufacturer?
If the vendor requires a license to let you run software on a powerful multi-media (sound, image, input, network) device they sold you, then I can tell you they put restrictions on what would otherwise be a general purpose computer. In my opinion, such crippling should be illegal.
For instance: the iPhone. It would definitely be general purpose if you didn't have to go through the App Store™.
Your microwave oven is different: minimum input, minimum display, one main purpose (heat food). Properly constructed ones can easily be bug-free on the first try, no need for patches. The firmware may even be fused into a strictly read-only chip. Clearly single purpose.
Personally, I'd tentatively set the limit at programmability: if there's any way to reprogram a machine, the user should be able to do it without authorization from the vendor. (We could make exceptions, for instance break control software in cars: such software should probably be tested to death and vetted by regulation. Preventing users from rolling their own may be justified to avoid untimely deaths on the road. Though "preventing" here could mean "legally disallow" rather than "use DRM". Not sure which is best.)
> In my opinion, such crippling should be illegal.
But I want that, as a consumer. For example: part of the benefit, perhaps one of the greatest benefits, is knowing that everyone using the device is subject to the same constraints. This makes cheating in online games on consoles much harder on consoles. It still happens, but it's much harder.
Why should it be illegal to sell me a device that limits the use of arbitrary code? I _want_ that in the product I'm buying.
PC competitive games are rampant with cheating; the cost of keeping cheaters off games is so astronomical that only major studios can afford to do it, and even still, cheating remains rampant. It's why cash prizes are fought over in hardware controlled venues.
Oh, I totally get that it's harder. At some point though, if you're serious about competition, you organise a LAN. (Too bad games gradually moved away from LAN altogether.)
More generally, locked down hardware means you have to trust a central third party. The cypherpunk in me doesn't like that. There has to be a better way (though I don't know what).
LANs are just a way of locking down the hardware and software of the competitors; they also aren't a viable option if you're unable to be physically near to your opponents.
The better way is to buy a general computing device if that's what you prefer, and let others buy their locked down devices if that's what they prefer.
Here's the thing: I'm not sure we can, in the long run, have it both ways. Not naturally anyway. The current tendency seems to go towards generalised lock down. It started with game consoles. Then iOS. And now even on the desktop, we see scary warnings from Windows and bypassing signature verification in MacOS is actually difficult if you don't know the procedure already. And soon, maybe those warnings will turn into hard errors?
For me to chose an open device, that open device has to exist in the first place. Where is the open equivalent of the PS5? I don't see any. And even if it did: I bet many competitive game would exclusively found in the locked down version. Or, more insidiously, there would be two arena: the locked down one with fewer (or no?) cheaters, and the open one with (presumably) all the cheaters. There would be a strong incentive to get the locked down version for this reason alone, and one isn't going to waste money & resources on a redundant piece of electronics just so they can play without cheats and access the homebrew market.
Now that I think of it, there might be a way: how about optional signatures? You'd take the same hardware, and run it in two modes: the open mode, and the signed mode. The signed mode would be thoroughly locked down by the hardware vendor, and run only signed code. This could affect networking too: just sign the encryption keys with the secure chip, and pass that along with a certificate from Nintendo or whoever. That way one would know the communication was initiated in "signed mode", thus guaranteeing the integrity of the game's binary, just like we would in an actually locked down console.
Heck, we could go even a step further: have the hardware security module be swappable. That way we can separate the hardware vendor from the certificate authority. Of course, they'd be one and the same by default, but we could still switch for another if we need to. (You could have a tournament specific CA, or the hardware vendor could revoke it's own HSM and send a new one to people.)
Raspberry Pi w/ RetroPi or Batocera. Perhaps sometime in the future it'll be Batocera on a RISCV.
You won't get better because without huge corporate dollars, as is the case with the Linux kernel, Gnome and KDE, you won't be able to fund the QA and devs necessary to do the bullshit boring work that is essential to making certain that consoles are a polished experience; from the operating system through to every game you purchase.
TCRs and TRCs are a thing, after all. You cannot ship without meeting a certain level of minimal tolerable quality.
> And even if it did: I bet many competitive game would exclusively found in the locked down version.
Yes. Of course.
What's in it for the developers when consumers demand anti-cheat measures, which are hideously expensive to maintain, and active and pervasive moderation which is, likewise, hideously expensive to maintain? To say nothing of the _total absence_ of any strong example of a FOSS video game performing well enough to fund a AAA-quality title.
> You'd take the same hardware, and run it in two modes: the open mode, and the signed mode.
Sony has done this twice. There was the PSOne's Net Yaroze, and there was the PS3's ability to run Linux (only for the first few iterations). Consumers didn't care enough for Sony to bother with it again.
IIRC, Xbox One indie developer licenses are still basically almost free.
Your idea is still locked down, though; you cannot run arbitrary code because you cannot cross the signed/unsigned boundaries.
> DRM for the people.
Browsers have this in the form of media extensions.
The R-Pi is nowhere near the raw capabilities of the PS5. Can't do that amazing Unreal Engine demo, or VR. A difference in degree large enough to be considered a difference in kind in my opinion. (I do reckon the R-Pi is powerful enough to do serious stuff, up to and including being a blazing fast workstation if we wrote the software for it.)
Batocera is not a piece of hardware? Could act as a platform for sure, but an ISA (fully specified, which means CPU + GPU + most peripherals) would in my opinion be better than an API. Closer to reality. Of course, we'd need APIs on top.
Two interesting aspects of consoles are the fixed ISA, and the fixed performance characteristics. We could possibly lift the latter without much consequences, as long as the hardware provides a well defined set of performance floors, that would determine what can run at which speed.
> you won't be able to fund the QA and devs necessary to do the bullshit boring work that is essential to making certain that consoles are a polished experience; from the operating system through to every game you purchase.
I certainly wouln't. The best I can boast about is having raised $7000 from the OTF for a 7-day security audit.
That said, it seems to me the "polished experience" is composed of fairly separate, or at least separable, problems. At the bottom is the hardware. Or even ISA. We need a hardware company to make that stuff. Not just the CPU, but all the rest. (Repeating what Casey said, stuff like GPU are becoming stable and general enough that fixing an ISA wouldn't have a significant negative impact on their evolution.) To do that, we need a big player like Intel or Nvidia on board — good fucking luck with that, unfortunately.
The second problem is provide high-level services that run on the hardware. OS, middleware… A huge undertaking if we're to have any backwards compatibility (we'd at least have to port Linux, and recompile everything). Perhaps not so bad if we flip the table and go in a direction closer in spirit to the Oberon project (Niklaus Wirth), or STEPS (Alan Kay's Viewpoint Research Institute).
The third problem is writing one or several store fronts like Steam.
The fourth problem is writing the actual games (and other applications). In some ways the easiest problem to solve, and in other ways the hardest. Easiest because game devs will go wherever they could sell their games, providing the ISA/API isn't too horrible (sometimes even when it is). The hardest because (i) that's where most of the effort will go, and (ii) the incentives of making the platform easy to work with may not be commensurate with that effort.
The zeroth problem is separating the above. The current world is set up for vertical integration. Apple and console vendors are the most extreme examples, but even Windows tends to be sold with the PC, in such a way that removing it is often not even cheaper. I have the feeling that we should think about a legal structure that would make it happen. This would include thinking about what corporations are supposed to enable. (This is where I start to question the entire economic system, so let's just note that pushed far enough, pretty much any subject has political implications.)
> Sony has done this twice. [PS3]. Consumers didn't care enough for Sony to bother with it again.
Wait a minute, if the first iterations of the PS3 could run Linux, how hard could have it been to port that ability to the new versions? I suspect they ended it for other reasons. If for instance the console did not by itself generated enough profit, and they compensated with online services, they'd have an incentive to limit sales to actual gamers, and run from the compute-cluster market.
> IIRC, Xbox One indie developer licenses are still basically almost free.
It's not just a matter of price. Can we make and sell porn games on the XBox One? I've heard that platforms like iOS disallow porn. And I don't see console vendors taking the heat for being "that platform with porn on it".
If regulation forced hardware vendors to open up their platforms, you could access questionable content on them, and nobody would take the flak. You'd still have "safe for work" store fronts, and porn hubs, and whatever controversial stuff huge corporation wouldn't feel like supporting.
> Your idea is still locked down, though; you cannot run arbitrary code because you cannot cross the signed/unsigned boundaries.
Locked down, yes, but the idea was to not lock people out of the system entirely. The main idea is that signed mode would give one additional ability: to prove that a given program, and the data it produces, traces back to a certificate chain that goes up to a given trusted certificate authority. (Sony gives Blizzard a certificate, Blizzard uses it to sign Starcraft 3, which then produces Blizzard authenticated network packets to stop cheats).
Unsigned programs should not be locked out of the platform at all. They'd just not be explicitly approved of, and maybe we'd display some warning before installation that this program is not endorsed, and may contain or do stuff that is "Not Good For You".
We probably won't see a competitive erotic wrestling game any time soon (no signatures to help cheat prevention), but at least we don't sacrifice some capabilities just so we can have other capabilities.
Console vendors aren't allowed to sell hardware at a loss. The price increase would be mild… and a truer reflection of the costs of owning a console (less hidden costs from the walled garden aspects).
The price increase would not have been mild - at the time this was written, it was the cost of a full game. When most only own a handful of games that's a significant difference.
Tells us something about the real price of that console, though. People don't see the price of the walled garden, since (i) it's always been this way, and (ii) it looks like the garden is providing flowers (in the form of a store). Such hidden (or externalised) costs are a bit of a lie. I'd rather be aware of the true price of what I'm buying.
Okay, this is where the analogy breaks down: one can totally have a non exclusive app store where people are guaranteed a certain level of quality, and a reasonable expectation of not downloading malware. For instance: Steam.
The only thing non-exclusive stores can't do is protect people from themselves. And even then you could still have the kid gloves on by default, yet let people take them off whenever they want. For instance by displaying some mildly scary warning about some program not being verified by the OS vendor, and then still let people click on the "install anyway" button. (The "Windows protected your PC" popup would be like that, though I think it overshoots to the point of dishonesty.)
Steam (almost[1]) nails the malware-free part, but people's drive to make it open to all and not fully curated (to remove AAA biases) also led to it becoming full of shovelware and "baby's first game" products. Conversely, Epic Games Store is doing the complete opposite with a heavily-curated store and a tightly-controlled catalog.
Console stores are not better in that regard though. I've heard plenty of complaints about the amount of trash in the Nintendo store, for example. All you're guaranteed with a vendor store is a lock of malware.
This is more of an anecdote as someone already linked the PS4 example, but: Sony lost on each sale of the PS3, sometimes a lot ($300 on launch), for years. After 4 years, they still lost around $18 per unit lost[1]. It was a costly bet that ended up not working out for them as the PS3 continued to be expensive to manufacture, while also being too complicated to program effectively. (Worse ports, perceived lower performance due to SMT differences compared to the 360, etc.)
Not really, the economics are just better for the platform with vendor lock-in. They'd still recoup their costs via their store, which they can gift powerful advantages like making it default, having it be more integrated in various ways, etc. It would likely end up as a power-law distribution of store usage with the platform owner on top, so platforms would still make their profits. Having an option for another store wouldn't be the end of anything, and would improve consumer agency significantly.
The lethal threat to fully unlocked consoles with no contractual limits ruled out by law isn't other stores or even piracy. It's people realizing that if they're selling the hardware at a loss, it'll likely be the most cost efficient GPU compute you can buy. This isn't supposition, it happened with the PS3: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20984028/playstation-supe...
There are jailbreaks for the PS4, and it seems more likely than not that there will also be jailbreaks for the PS5. The barriers for actors who want to exploit console compute power are not significant. But they are significant for regular consumers.
Building cluster out of machines you’re not sure you’ll be able to consistently jailbreak and therefore replace even in the near term is a huge barrier to building a PS4 cluster like the PS3 ones.
Isn't that roughly what Google has done with Android? They can choose what they want to curate in their own app store, but they don't lock users in based on hardware or use of Android OS. (Someone should take them to court over their prioritization of AMP pages, but that's a different story).
This is a disingenuous comparison. Epic does not sell content not made by Epic in Fortnite, while Apple sells content not made by Apple in the App Store. This is like saying a branded clothing store in a mall has to sell things that aren't of its brand if it wants to complain about the mall throttling its sales.
Ah, so you're saying the key difference is that Apple has allowed the sale of third party content in their product. Do you agree then, that:
1. If Apple didn't allow the sale of third party content, they would be in the same position as Epic and therefore there would be no problem?
2. If Epic allowed the sale of third party content, they should not be allowed to control what type of content is sold, nor should they be allowed to collect a percentage of each sale?
> 2. If Epic allowed the sale of third party content, they should not be allowed to control what type of content is sold, nor should they be allowed to collect a percentage of each sale?
I don't think anyone has a problem with platforms charging _a_ percentage of each sale, just that Apple's is too high (and in the case of their dispute with Spotify, that it allows them to unfairly compete in their own marketplace)
Would we accept if the $1000 computer we buy forces us to use only their OS, can install software from their own store only, will receive only 3-5 years of software updates?
Why should we give a smartphone manufacturer(who ever it may be) such overwhelming ownership over their hardware when the computer manufacturers don't get it?
It's amazing how everyone who brings that up avoids this question:
Does Epic allow anyone to create and and sell content for Fortnite, without giving Epic any money?
Do Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo allow other stores on their consoles?