While I think there's an argument for being required to allow online access to those within warranty, it makes way more sense to just guarantee it plays the games it played when you got it. It's something that consumers could easily understand and depend on.
That's not a given. Some of the features require no ongoing support, like playing media from a local server.
> So, if Sony wanted to shut down their games division tomorrow (...) how long should they be required to keep running their servers?
Leave the concrete numbers to the judges and juries. But if today I bought a $700 console from an authorized dealer, and tomorrow it was a brick, I'm pretty sure I'd have a case for getting a big chunk of that money back. If in a year it was mostly a brick, I'd expect less money back. Exact numbers in these cases come down to negotiation.
All this is tangential of course because Sony didn't stop supporting the platform.
Some choice:
> However, without updating, console owners couldn't connect to the PlayStation Network, play any games online, play any games or Blu-ray movies that required the new firmware, play any files kept on a media server, or download any future updates.
If you buy a product on a claim that it performs N features, and a future update forces you to choose which subset of N features you would like to keep, the company has still failed on their claim.