this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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Their plan was to make up the difference in game sales. You were paying full price with the cost shifted to the games to trick you into thinking you got a bargain.
If I sell you a hot dog for $1 with a business model that you will buy an overpriced soda 5 minutes later at the stand next door, I don't get to take that hotdog back after sale when I see you didn't also buy the soda.
Selling products as loss leaders is not some absurd esoteric strategy, and it was quite normal for consoles to be subsidized with that exact goal. They needed systems affordable enough to get into homes, otherwise there's no user base. No user base means no opportunity for game sales. No game sales, and it ends up as the Dreamcast.
So it starts to sound like their big mistake was ever allowing Linux and general computing to begin with? Sony were the only ones doing that even while the competition was an actual x86 machine running some form of Windows. Users still had to buy a PC to use office.
Companies (and governments) saw an opportunity for cheap computers that outperformed traditional servers and took advantage of it. Now no one gets Linux.
Selling at a loss is fine. What isn't fine is coming back later and grabbing the hot dog, a hot dog you already paid for, out of your hand because you didn't buy the soda a while later despite nothing in the hotdog purchase that required the purchase of a soda.
They sold it with Linux and then later grabbed it out of the customer's hand.