Comment by rsynnott
This sort of thing happens relatively often; Sony also tried (unsuccessfully) to have the PS2 deemed a personal computer (which would have lead to 0 tariffs in the EU): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabasic#PlayStation_2
This sort of thing happens relatively often; Sony also tried (unsuccessfully) to have the PS2 deemed a personal computer (which would have lead to 0 tariffs in the EU): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabasic#PlayStation_2
I often wonder what the ROI is on this. How much did Sony have to pay engineers to implement this interesting but seemingly pretty useless functionality vs. what it actually saved them in the aforementioned tariffs? I know the knee jerk reaction is to say it obviously saved them some money or they wouldn't have done it, but I've seen far too much corporate stupidity in my life to take that as a given. I'd love to see the data.
If it can run a desktop linux environment it's a PC. That said it probably should only count if the preinstalled software is Linux and not some games OS.
Maybe it was just a passion project for the engineers or even Ken Kutaragi ? See also Net Yarose, Linux For Playstation 2, Other OS & Yellow Dog Linux for Playstation 3.
IIRC the PS3 Linux option existed because of this same tariff.