Nearly forced. once the console downloads the update, it will be applied automatically upon reboot.
The alternative is to never connect to WiFi, ever, and some do that.
Generally, consumers would want to downgrade because older versions have vulnerabilities that are fixed in newer versions. these vulnerabilities allow console owners to do what they want with their hardware, and gaming communities have shown Nintendo time and time again that if it is possible to use game hardware for game piracy, it will be widely used for that purpose.
Those of us who want a neat standardized hardware platform to hack on without pirating anything are in the noise floor for companies like Nintendo, so we have no representation among neither pirates nor the console manufacturer.
I've been out of "the scene" for many years now, but back in the day, I had a Flash Cart[0][1] so that I could have all (literally all...) the Nintendo DS games at hand. I was a naughty naughty pirate.
The flash cart also added some really neat features that were missing, such as: the ability to take screenshots, ability to save and restore a game at any point, ability to load cheats like infinite ammo and such.
Nintendo was/is at war with cart users and any update to a DS with a flash cart stood a good chance of either killing the flash cart or rendering it inoperable until a new firmware was released for the flash cart (which may never happen). There's a long and great history here. And if you want to know more, the GBATemp wiki[3] is a great starting point.
I caught on to their game after I bought the 16 bit console. Haven't touched nintendo since. They think they own the second hand market, you couldn't even buy a second hand game without nintendo wanting a cut of the sale. Every console is missing some feature that earlier had, and then they add that later and sell you the same console, just this time with an audio port! I forget all the details though, haven't really thought about nintendo or other consoles in many years.
What are you talking about? Where would Nintendo get the cut of a used game sale? Especially in the 16 bit era? Arguably Microsoft was closest to do this with the whole Xbox One debacle.
Is there a feature that the Game Boy had that the Game Boy Color lacked? Nope. GBA did drop the infrared port that was barely used by GBC games but my PS3 also can't use my PS1 memory cards nor can an Xbox One use a 360 memory card or the HD-DVD drive. And Series X lacks Kinect or HDMI in support. Poorly used or outdated features often go away.
The Game Boy Advance SP removed the traditional TRS headphone jack and replaced it with a custom connector (which was later re-used for the DS's power port). An adapter to allow the use of standard TRS headphones was an optional extra purchase.
Nintendo is a public company. They are sort of supposed to look out for the shareholder, you know?
Many of their new games are still good.
And, of course, there's plenty of competition in both hardware capable of running games and in games themselves, so it's not like Nintendo has a monopoly. (And it's pretty well known up-front to customers that Nintendo likes to keep a tight grip. So it's not like people don't know what's coming.)
In fact, that is exactly what Nintendo is doing and what the fine article is about. Bricking a device is an effective way of prying it from the customers' hands.
The Amazon kindle os does not allow downgrades, not sure if it’s using fuses or not.
In that case it isn’t about access to pirated content either—people want to be able to modify it for basic features the company has neglected to provide.
The alternative is to never connect to WiFi, ever, and some do that.
Generally, consumers would want to downgrade because older versions have vulnerabilities that are fixed in newer versions. these vulnerabilities allow console owners to do what they want with their hardware, and gaming communities have shown Nintendo time and time again that if it is possible to use game hardware for game piracy, it will be widely used for that purpose.
Those of us who want a neat standardized hardware platform to hack on without pirating anything are in the noise floor for companies like Nintendo, so we have no representation among neither pirates nor the console manufacturer.