It was a bad thing thinking that eventually you wouldn't be able to sell games because people would be passing them around like MP3's.
Nintendo's iron grasp over its hardware led to tyrannical behaviour that stilted access to the platform (not to mention setting themselves up for a future fall). A hardware lock on the modern PC would act no differently and if you think that, as an independent developer, you would have access to this DRM rather than being locked out of it like every other piece of small fry on the planet then you're deluded. You would have to go through a 'proper' publisher and watch a disproportionately high percentage of your profits disappear into the ether rather than, y'know, a disproportionately low one.