The alternative to banning homebrew would be to make a profit on the hardware and developer's kits.
Homebrew has not killed Microsoft Windows, afterall...
It comes down to a question of what someone is willing to pay. Would you download OpenOffice or buy Microsoft Office? There are plus' and minus' to both.
Commodore made a profit on hardware and peripherals. Published "some" software.
I believe the C64 was $1000 at launch. A few years later, my family picked it up for $400. That was 1984. Looking at those numbers, the PS3 is a steal, but not so "homebrew friendly".
Piracy can be stopped via custom media. Sony has the right idea in the patent where media is sold on a writeable that locks itself to that particular machine. Homebrew could still be allowed, but you wouldn't allow it to run off the BR-drive so nothing would come close to commercial quality 50GB (potential) titles.
