> Imagine if Sony did this on Playstation. a) prohibiting the installation of non-PlayStation games and b) insisting that all purchases done via their store give them a 30% cut.
Many platforms are like this -- and many also have the majority marketshare. Is this a call to redefine what platforms can and cannot control?
Historically, other game consoles could be used a "general purpose computing devices," such as the Sega Dreamcast with Windows CE and the Nintendo Famicom (which is short for Family Computer).
Afaik, there was never a Windows CE general purpose environment for the Dreamcast. Sega supported game developers using Sega's 100% propriatary OS or using Windows CE as embedded OS. Either way, the OS would ship on the disc, and isn't a lot more than a kernel and libraries.
Of course, BSDs and Linux were ported to the Dreamcast at some point, as with anything that can boot user provided code and has enough ram.
The dreamcast did have a web browser, and keyboard and mouse, but without significant local writable storage, would make a lousy general purpose computer.