Because that's what this is? There's a difference between making changes which not everyone approves of - and you really can't please all the people all of the time - and actually breaking a given piece of code which previously worked correctly. Sony and MS have put out firmware updates that some people don't like or have caused a small percentage of consoles to fail, but that's not the same scale as this. Every single wii that updates will see this failure.
Only to a limited number of those consoles in people's homes, never all of them. And most of the changes brought in in firmware updates on those have been 'negative' in a subjective sense, rather than in an objective sense of removing actual functionality. The only example of the actual removal of functionality on the PS3 I can remember is that the recent V3 update removed the ability to install linux on the PS3. Given the very small percentage of PS3 owners who ever took advantage of that, I'm not sure it's equivalent to breaking flash in the web browser of every single Wii.
[/quote]Look at the latest PS3 update and the problems some people seem to be having.
What aspect of the 'core functionality' of the PS3 has the recent firmware update 'broken'? And no, being able to install linux is not 'core functionality' to a games console.