The PS3, in large part, sold because it was THE best blu ray player out there. At a time when games on the Sony were actively worse than any other platform (because the CBE was a mofo for third parties), the PS3 was heavily buoyed by it weirdly being one of the cheapest blu ray players out there. And the PS2 was a REALLY good DVD player which heavily contributed to its market dominance.

For people who already have an AVR and are used to doing all their own infrastructure, it matters less. For people who essentially plug one box into the one "good" port on their TV? When there is one 1k USD box that can only do games and one 1k USD box that does games and netflix and youtube and disney plus?

It might not be a huge deal in the long run (especially with TVs having a lot of this functionality built in) but it is a talking point with no good answers. And that impacts the idea of it being "an entry point".

And, just to add on. Apps are INCREDIBLY important to the average person... and most power users. Just look at the various attempts to spin up a "free" phone whether it is Graphene or Linux Phones or whatever. People get started going through and might even figure out they can do 90% of what they actually do on the non-google solution. Then they realize they can't log-in to their credit card's app (which the companies more or less require you to auth with if you are calling them because they disabled your card before sending a new one...). And you can't log into your kid's daycare's camera system. And you can't watch AEW on the shitter. And so forth.

Which is why google is actively preventing sideloading and working with those apps to lock them into google play services. And you can bet the solution they come up with to continue to allow sideloading will further lock in the GP services side of things.