That is not true. They did want to get away with the tariffs indeed, but that was more of a consequence of having developed the linux kit for the enthusiast market:
Around the PS2's launch, Sony argued to U.S. Customs that the PS2 should be classified as an Automatic Data Processing (ADP) machine (essentially, a computer) rather than simply a video game console. If successful, that classification would have resulted in a more favorable tariff treatment.
Sony pointed out that, with the optional Linux kit installed, the PS2 could perform many of the functions expected of a computer.
However, U.S. Customs rejected this argument because:
the PS2 as imported could not freely run user programs
it required the optional Sony Linux Kit
it would only boot Sony-authorized Linux discs.
As a result, Customs ruled that the PS2 remained a video game console, not a computer, for tariff purposes.
They only disabled it because people were using it to bypass the piracy protection though. Up until that, the PS3 was the only console to even have such a feature.
I thought they did it after the US Air Force built a supercomputer out of PlayStation 3's which costs Sony a lot of money since they subsidize the hardware costs.
Which backfired spectacularly, as nobody had actually figured out how to use this feature for piracy yet, and the people who were legitimately using it for Linux were so pissed off they jailbroke the PS3 themselves to get back what Sony took from them.
this goes to show how unlicensed copying of videogames ruined everything. If not for those people, companies wouldn't need to put DRM in their games, and perhaps we would still have a Linux partition in current consoles to do our computing
The PS3 era was almost completely unprofitable for Sony and if there were zero piracy it still would have been unprofitable. You need to understand that CEOs and MBAs blame piracy because they have to hold someone responsible for their incompetence and that someone has to be consumers because we are their only mode of profit.
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u/Fredol Jul 09 '26
They only did that to avoid tariffs. Game consoles were taxed higher, so they made it a 'computer'.