> Homebrew scenes seem like a candidate for doing things "the right way", but culturally they're a lot closer to piracy scenes than anyone wants to admit, at least in front of a court.
I realize the homebrew scene doesn't view themselves this way, but I pretty much view them as part of the piracy scene even when they are antagonistic towards those who pirate games. The main difference is that they are "pirating" hardware rather than software. By that I mean they are overriding DRM created by the hardware vendor to use the hardware in unauthorized ways.
Now it is easy to say that you should be able to do what you want with hardware you own. In most respects, I am sympathetic with that. Yet I don't like that philosophy for one big reason: it creates a huge disincentive to those who want to create open platforms since it is going to be nearly impossible for them to get any traction when they are up against jailbroken devices from huge multinational corporations.
> it creates a huge disincentive to those who want to create open platforms since it is going to be nearly impossible for them to get any traction when they are up against jailbroken devices from huge multinational corporations.
I'm not so sure about that. More specifically, I wonder if there are more or fewer Steam Decks in the wild than jailbroken Nintendo Switch units.
When I was writing that, I was thinking of other platforms. For example: I had a GP2X at one point, which was a handheld console that ran Linux. It clearly wasn't a mass-market device, but it was an open platform with plenty of development tools. It should have been the sort of thing that appealed to homebrew developers. It was appealing for some, but it was up against the Nintendo DS with flash cartridges. There were almost certainly more flash cartridges than GP2X's in the world, even though they were a grey market item (at best). They didn't have a chance, and I think they only managed to produce one successor before going out of business. (Of course, there were other factors. This was right around the time of smartphones becoming popular. Smartphones may have crumby controls for gaming, but at least anyone could develop software for Android and the barrier to entry was relatively low for iOS.)
The Steam Deck, well, that has other things going for it. Yes, it is an open platform. Yet it, along with similar devices, are also PC compatible. That makes it appealing to developers, may they be developing games for Linux or Windows. Perhaps the biggest thing going for it is being backed by Valve, which is large enough to coexist with Nintendo and is unusual for a larger company in that they value an open ecosystem. To understand how unusual that is for a large player entering the market, just look at the original Xbox.
I very much doubt that jailbreaking and the homebrew scene contribute significantly to the difficulty of building a financially viable open hardware platform.
Building a mass market hardware platform of any kind is incredibly difficult on its own merits.
I realize the homebrew scene doesn't view themselves this way, but I pretty much view them as part of the piracy scene even when they are antagonistic towards those who pirate games. The main difference is that they are "pirating" hardware rather than software. By that I mean they are overriding DRM created by the hardware vendor to use the hardware in unauthorized ways.
Now it is easy to say that you should be able to do what you want with hardware you own. In most respects, I am sympathetic with that. Yet I don't like that philosophy for one big reason: it creates a huge disincentive to those who want to create open platforms since it is going to be nearly impossible for them to get any traction when they are up against jailbroken devices from huge multinational corporations.