If it were possible to go the wrong way on the expanding brain meme, this would be it.
Nobody is buying consoles for the hardware. 99% of the product is software. The accounting that you are using, a popular one, is so opppositely-informative that people who make consoles - and smartphones for that matter - clearly do not make decisions with it. It is 200% wrong to characterize it as dumping. Nothing is being dumped.
Here’s a simple idea for you: show me the vibrant market for Xbox 360 2005 era computer hardware. There isn’t any right? What about Xbox One 2013 era? And yet we still play games that were developed earlier than 2013, like League of Legends. The product is software. Nobody loses anything by being unable to run Linux on 2013 hardware today, and nobody loses anything by being unable to run Linux on the Xbox One in 2013 because, if they wanted cheap computers then, they had plenty to choose from!
Both the hardware and software are products. No one selling open platform PCs can compete with negative margin console sales, which is anticompetive. If antitrust prevented dumping consoles would be more expensive and consumers would buy PCs instead. In both software and hardware the open PC platform is far more competitive which drives value for consumers.
> No one selling open platform PCs can compete with negative margin console sales
This makes zero sense. Both have existed simultaneously forever, and hundreds of millions of people eagerly buy both for the same households. I cannot understand your point of view here, other than invoking a word "dumping" and "anticompetive" that you are using 200% wrong. Consoles and open platform PCs do not compete with each other.
> In both software and hardware the open PC platform is far more competitive which drives value for consumers.
The market for high budget single player games exists solely because of DRM protected consoles. So this category of product, that people eagerly have paid for for decades, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, would cease to exist if you required console makers to allow people to bypass DRM. Ask 20 people in the game industry and 19 would agree. I understand the core and spirit of what you are saying, but it is reflecting your aspirations for a world that doesn't exist. Markets aren't art exhibits!
That both exist does not make negative margin sales not an anticompetive practice. Dumping is the correct term for such anticompetive behavior. Consoles are just x86 PCs. They run the same application software.
The Witcher 4 is a high budget single player game and sold 30 million copies despite having no DRM. I don't think you're familiar with the games industry.
