What can't believe are the comments on that page. Are people really that eager to praise their "overlords" in the name of "better gaming"? But can there really be that many trolls?
The scary part is that these are most likely real people, who like their control and surveillance just fine, and are the majority. Which means we will probably see a completely locked down internet sooner or later.
They are 14 year old playstation fanboys, who have a religious devotion to their console brand of choice. This stems from the teenage search for identity. Having made violently strong cases for their favoured console in arguments with their friends at school, they are now ideologically wedded to this position and unable to deviate from it one iota for fear of the inconsistency being seen as weakness, and more importantly, of it undermining their own fragile sense of who they are: a Playstation Fan.
It's basically a microcosm of partisan politics. Don't worry too much about it.
EDIT: Alternatively they could be very lazy astroturfers.
EDIT2: The comparison of console wars to partisan politics has raised another question that I've never considered before: what will happen in a few decades time when the children of people who have themselves been gaming since childhood reach their teen years? Will we see similar patterns to politics, where children tend to inherit their views from their parents without question? Will parents war with their children over their opposing views on gaming?
"This family has played nintendo for four generations! I'll be damned if any son of mine is going to play an xbox 1080 under my roof!"
Regarding your second edit, it's not as if brand loyalty is some amazing emergent phenomenon in the 14-year-old-game-console-consumer-ecosystem. People are just as loyal to brands of operating systems, cars, banks, food, pants, cigarettes, useful pocket tools, kitchenware, and high-efficiency toilets, and they've been so forever.
You are right. The difference between consoles and the rest of those product categories is that people do not typically have them as a core part of their identity in the way that children often do with video games, and the way that many people do with political parties. Well, maybe they do for operating systems.
However, while politics remains a defining factor in peoples views of themselves well into adulthood and parenthood, console/OS choice does not.
Those people for whom it does are probably less likely to breed so the effect will likely not be measurable.
Ford and John Deere are two brands that I believe have been integrated into the identity of some. I'm trying to think of other examples, news, maybe beverages? coke&pepsi is now obvious to me, others are harder. I guess apple/google/microsoft is the only other I can find.
Those were my initial thoughts as well, but my next thought was that it could very well be that the general public simply does not care about issues like open information. They are happy as long as they get their games or Facebook access, and when faced with a question about such a matter they will believe the authority on the subject. And reading HN provides false hope.
The general public do not care about console modding rights at all. That's why they do not rush to post comments on sony's corporate blog. The majority of people don't even really know what a blog is. Even if they did, they would likely have no motivation to spurt their comments unbidden onto it. What we do here really is deviant behaviour, statistically speaking.
Normal, non-religiously-devoted gamers don't post there either, they inhabit more independent fora. The only people posting there are sony fanboys.
The scary part is that these are most likely real people, who like their control and surveillance just fine, and are the majority. Which means we will probably see a completely locked down internet sooner or later.