I wonder if it means anything legally that (at least for the initial period of the console's life) Sony was selling the device for less than cost with the expectation that they would make up the difference with game sales.
I think there is some moral greyness to buying an essentially subsidized console with no intention to buy games -- though now that they probably make a profit on the hardware, that point is moot.
There is no moral greyness; It's a business model that has it's potential profits and potential risks. If their business model as a flaw, that's not a failing of someone else's morality. We also have no moral obligation to ensure the profits of corporations.
If you agree with Sony lawyers that companies like Sony, along with the current copyright law, are doing a good job of encouraging productivity, then you absolutely ought to feel a moral obligation to help ensure their profits and perpetuate their business model. And I guarantee that many of the people working hard to jailbreak the PS3, believing the opposite, feel a moral obligation to help eliminate that business model. There's nothing about capitalism that suddenly abrogates these decisions.
I was specifically commenting on the practice of buying the console with no intention to buy games. You could make the same argument about purchasing razors with no intention of buying the blades. Copyright law has nothing to do with razors and blades why should it have anything to do with consoles and games assuming no piracy is involved? Does the moral equation change if we're not talking about game consoles? Is morality a factor when purchasing heavily discounted razors at the asking price?
The practice of buying the console with no intention to buy games seems to have been somewhat common among academics, who used clusters of the machines for things completely unrelated to gaming. My research advisor at some terrible state university in Texas had about forty of them for algorithms research purposes.
The marketing value of a supercomputer built from your company's product is surely worth the loss of subsidy. Each time one of them is built, it invariably results in a bunch of news stories. This helps reinforce the PS3's reputation as the most powerful modern console hardware.
They're probably enabling it in some cases -- the US military has built clusters with thousands of PS3s. I doubt they procured those through Best Buy.
Even if it's not, Sony could have sold unlocked* units at a non-lossmaking value, which would have instantly discouraged a large proportion of the hacking movement. This is what OtherOS provided: a valve for homebrew enthusiasts, why there were no serious efforts for the duration.
*By unlocked I mean "homebrew unlocked" and without the ability to play games.
I think there is some moral greyness to buying an essentially subsidized console with no intention to buy games -- though now that they probably make a profit on the hardware, that point is moot.