Why are video games still the only closed entertainment platform?

[famousringo]

theshonen8899 said:

Imagine if record labels for music made exclusive songs that only worked on iPods. You could emulate the song on other MP3 players, but you'd have to tweak it a lot for it to play smoothly and some just won't work well at all for it to be an enjoyable experience.

Imagine if Paramount Pictures made films that only work on Samsung Blu-Ray players and even though it's still a Blu-Ray disc, it won't work in Panasonic or Sony Blu-Ray players.

Imagine if Netflix only worked on Roku, even though Chromecast, Apple TV, or any video game console could stream Netflix just fine.

Do you see where I'm getting at? At the moment I have a PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, and PC all hooked up to the same TV. These consoles are all running different variations of AMD hardware, with the only major differences being the gaps in power. I find this as pointless as having four different Blu-Ray players.

But this is what it takes to be a "hardcore" gamer. If I want to play Zelda, inFAMOUS, Forza, and DayZ, this is the kind of pointless investment I have to make. Nevermind the fact that every single one of these games could work perfectly fine on a PC. People wonder why it's so difficult for gaming to go mainstream, well this right here is the reason. If people had the options to go for a single, united set top box to play Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony games through services like Amazon or Steam on a variety of hardware like ASUS, Sony, or Samsung, how much more convenient would this be?

I've never been a PC gamer just because of graphics. I support PC gaming because it's the only open platform where I don't have to worry about BS like backwards compatibility. Someday I hope that playing games will be easy and simple as playing music or watching TV.

Netflix is a platform. It only operates where and how Netflix permits it to operate. Netflix doesn't support your hardware? Tough. Wanna stream your Netflix from this device to that one? DRM says no.

Blu-ray is a closed platform. If you don't license it, it won't work. See your Wii U.

And there are many closed platforms for music. Even though iTunes and similar download services have removed DRM, there are now many streaming services that require a subscription. Even mp3 file (theoretically) require a licensed encoder before you can make them. Not so open.

Closed platforms are even more common for videogames because they require a huge stack of technology behind them to work, from low-latency wireless radios to graphics APIs to coding tools to the same AV codecs that those video and audio services rely on. The people who make all that software and hardware want to get paid for their work, and reverse-engineering all that work is an even bigger undertaking than making a half-decent audio codec.