You are misrembering history a bit here. The "lockout chip" concept came with Nintendo's NES (Famicom in Japan). Tengen bypassed the lockout chip for their games (including their NES version of Tetris which many consider vastly superior to Nintendo's implementation) and this resulted in a lawsuit from Nintendo which was eventually settled because the court ruled that there was no copyright claim and that Nintendo's patent claim was probably too weak to stand (though the settlement occured before that was passed back to the USPTO).
Having said all of that, I too am confused with the argument here -- the videogame console market is very much a walled garden and has been for a very long time.
Comments
You are misrembering history a bit here. The "lockout chip" concept came with Nintendo's NES (Famicom in Japan). Tengen bypassed the lockout chip for their games (including their NES version of Tetris which many consider vastly superior to Nintendo's implementation) and this resulted in a lawsuit from Nintendo which was eventually settled because the court ruled that there was no copyright claim and that Nintendo's patent claim was probably too weak to stand (though the settlement occured before that was passed back to the USPTO).
Having said all of that, I too am confused with the argument here -- the videogame console market is very much a walled garden and has been for a very long time.