Oh come now, that's not even remotely the same thing! DVD Players don't physically have BluRay drives. But you can create your own DVDs, and the players won't stop you from playing them.
The second part of your sentence is not a natural consequence of the first part. I don't think that the owners of a platform should have control over what users do with the platform. Consoles are designed for games, yes, but if I want to make and sell my own games, it should be up to consumers whether to buy what I create.
And, who knows—tools get repurposed in novel ways all the time! Toasters can't bake cake, but you're welcome to try, and maybe create a new food in the process.
I'm being extreme with the examples for the sake of the discussion, but it's relatable. On the Nintendo Switch discussions examples going before, it doesn't physically have DVDs or similar optical drives either, it has purpose made cartridges (and the online store).
Maybe Apple doesn't trust the hardware infrastructure, security in place, etc that third party stores might have. Maybe they want to have all apps stored in their "100% renewable energy data centers". The argument of not having a physically built-in feature could be made along the whole pipeline. Maybe signing apps on third party stores could come with access to corporate secrets, maybe knowing about that T2 chip that's making the news lately about being potentially flawed.
This doesn't mean that we don't have a choice though, we can always buy either a Nintendo console, an XBox, PS, an iPhone, an Android, buy things on the stores or not.
Toasters: Agreed on that experimentation side of things, but regarding novel ways to use existing gadgets, the hackers/researches/jailbreakers/etc of the world are not stopped by this... most consoles can be hacked to run Linux for example, custom emulators, saw a video running GTA3 on a Switch, etc... in the same way a DIYer gets said toaster, plugs an Arduino somehow and makes, dunno, a temperature driven house heater with it that makes grilled bread too.
On the key points:
Consoles are designed for games, yes, but if I want to make and sell my own games, it should be up to consumers whether to buy what I create.
This is not really an issue currently, I can, for a measly fee of $100 a year, get access to all the tools, distribution channels, infrastructure, user traffic, hosting, storage, review/patch/update support with infinite tries... users can then device to buy it or not.
I really think this has been taken out of proportion and I hope, like I have said many times before, it doesn't get back to the dark ages of
$100k+ per program/game/devkit-license/etc instead of said $100 fee + 30% IF it takes off.
