Game developers go where the market is, regardless of the technical challenges, if they got their chips shipped with enough dvd players, people would start making games for them and it would snowball. Would it replace dedicated gaming hardware? Probably not, but it certainly could of eaten some of the casual market like the iphone did to the gameboy.
Yes, non-gaming platforms will eventually get games just by being popular. But that requires millions of units at a minimum, and even that might not be enough (what was the state of desktop Linux gaming in 2012?). For this path to work, the platform needs to become popular first. For the PC the early value proposition was productivity applications. For the iPhone it was good mobile web browsing, maps, etc.
A gaming system (which this was) can't wait for that popularity to happen through some other means. The games are the raison d'être of the system, the only reason for people to buy one. What was the end-user pitch here that'd get one of these to the hands of millions of consumers? "You can buy some other DVD player for $200, or this one that might some day play games for $300". Not very compelling, when both of them do an equally good job with the main task you're buying a DVD player for.
> Yes, non-gaming platforms will eventually get games just by being popular.
I wouldn't say this is an inevitability. Look at Nokia feature-phones.
Sure, from what I've heard and read an incredibly poorly designed ecosystem and lack of carrier interest, but you can't tell me Snake was the best the market could come up with...
