In the case of game consoles though, they're essentially general purpose PCs that are sold to under cost with the expectation that they'll make their money back on game sales. I think that's a fair assumption, and of course if game consoles weren't locked down it would open the doors for people to get x compute power for less than it would be worth otherwise.
Whether you agree with that model or not, it's definitely different than the iPhone model where you are paying full price for the hardware, but are limited in what software you can run on it.
Whether you agree with that model or not, it's definitely different than the iPhone model where you are paying full price for the hardware, but are limited in what software you can run on it.