Indeed
Making a system do something it shouldn't like making it play PS1 games or creating your own games, that's the fun as there's irony in a PSP playing N64 games.
Older systems that are now not sold so it allows the older generation of games onto the new system, and people being able to make their own little fun apps and games on it.
An item which is solely for piracy benefits only the seller of the piece, while killing the object it works on.
People should only praise a item that removes restrictions such as a Region Unlocking chip, as it doesn't impede the system's life/success as you are merely given more freedom of the games you can purchase, allowing the creators more access to funding for their next big game and maybe even a chance to show them that they can indeed expand into different regions and that people will support them.
When it's just for making things free, it poses no use apart from people that see that they shouldn't have to work to get anything.
This is what is wrong with people; feeling they are owed for something when they're not.
It's not just making them free, the developers of the game you pirate lose out, they don't get any funds, so how do you expect them to make the next game? The software suddenly lacks because everyone has had to cut costs because they won't get much back for the time they have spent.
It's such a shame that the WiiU will have to deal with this idiocy if this chip is true, people will just buy the system but won't purchase games, Nintendo sell more systems but the software developers and game developers lose out, and if this keeps happening what funding will there be left for games? People will just keep seeing the same over and over again and we get fewer amazing games.
Some interesting logic. Allow me a chance to pose a few thought problems based upon them.
"like making it play PS1 games"
It varies from country to country but it should be noted copyright extends into the decades and usually above 50 years in all the major regions. Game companies porting, revisiting, bundling or otherwise making a use of their back catalogue is a well established practice so emulation could be considered to have substantial infringing uses.
"[a Region Unlocking chip] doesn't impede the system's potential for success."
What are the local sales tax rates for the all the counties, cities and states along the west coast of North America and the censorship policies, enforced and unwritten, in the same? I could go on but the eventual answer would be "I do not know" and it varies enough that no one person or even group could be expected to know everything everywhere. It is for this reason we have publishers in different regions and if the chip could be said to undermine this structure..... Similarly the differing censorship policies could reflect badly upon the console maker (see also playstation pornable) and thus its entry into a territory could be impeded.
Finally there are various days/periods where one aims to release something, does not want to release something or you might face competition and want to delay something; in the US there are days like Labor day, thanksgiving and independence day which mean absolutely nothing in the UK and on the flip side there is no such thing as half term holidays in most of the US where you can bet my new game with a substantial school age market would be launched to coincide with such a thing in the UK.
"When it's just for making things free, it poses no use apart from people that see that they shouldn't have to work to get anything."
What happened to the backups, disc preserving, console laser preserving (something a myth as far as I am concerned but that is a different discussion), ease of use and other arguments that usually get trotted out at this point?
"This is what is wrong with people; feeling they are owed for something when they're not."
That is a rather narrow assessment of the reasoning for everybody that ever played in these circles. Is "I am owed nothing but I will take it if I can" not a viable option for reasoning here?
"It's not just making them free, the developers of the game you pirate lose out, they don't get any funds, so how do you expect them to make the next game?"
Does this not touch upon the "impact of unlicensed copies" debate which has raged for years with no clear cut consensus on the matter? See also "well I would not have purchased it anyway", "DLC/in game purchases still count", "I might buy the sequel", "my online game needs a community to function and having someone in that community for the negligible bandwidth cost is potentially better than not having them" and other such arguments.
Similarly the 360 saw an almost trivial hack for many years and it basically ended up the same as the PS3 (arguably its main rival) in terms of the games it got. Indeed it spent quite some time somewhat ahead of the PS3.
Will this enable homebrew like emulators, video players that can handle 10 bit MKVs, etc?
heh 10 bit being seen as useful...
Short version is very unlikely it will allow for that sort of thing by itself if Nintendo have done their job properly and learned their lessons from previous consoles.