AlfredoTurkey said:
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Only to a lesser extent. The primary mechanism of perpetuation for anything related to the tech industry is the use of planned obsolescence.
With consoles in particular, users of VGC are well aware of consumer buying trends over multiple generations of hardware. And that's even with the acknowledgement that consoles actually move slower in this respect than almost any other tech product, with each new generation taking a good five years on average to cycle, often more. A good part of this has to do with competition between different brand platforms, but considering the percentage of consumers who continually buy the same brand, often times, each company is marketing and developing for their existing consumer base.
Competition really only comes into play in convincing the existing consumer base to jump ship to a competing brand.
But the data shows how consumer interest in terms of unit sales of new console platforms follow trackable trends that rise, peak and eventually decline, which is key in planning replacement products (successive console generations).
Typically, new consoles don't get an automatic free pass from all consumers (those who automatically buy new platforms are a smaller niche); the companies that produce them must use marketing to convince consumers of the benefits that their new platform provides. R&D is responsible for making those benefits happen beforehand in a way that is intended to produce a successful product, as in one that will convince consumers to replace previous generation devices.
This would happen even if there was only one company making consoles. In terms of performance, the console industry would probably start looking a bit more like the gaming PC industry, which is largely built upon the GPU/video card industry and I'm not convinced that competition with AMD is what keeps Nvidia spending R&D dollars on newer GPUs to keep them from buying AMD. They want people to upgrade as often as possible.
About the only thing that would be in question would be price competition, which has benefited the console consumer base greatly in the past. The practice of selling hardware at a loss was pretty much standard practice by the 5th generation, thanks to Sony. This effectively killed Sega as a console producer.
However, even price isn't solely dictated by competition between companies. Over the course of a generation, console manufacturers are able to reduce the BoM of their hardware by simplifiying existing designs (eliminating redundant or non-essential components) and utilizing advances in manufacturing processes (smaller dies in the photolithographic process = less silicon per chip, more chips per silicon wafer, more chips for less $). By passing these savings onto consumers rather than simply increasing profit margins by maintaining the same MSRP, they expand the available market for their product. In short, there's a bigger market for a given console at $399 than $499 and more of a market for that same console at $299 than $399. Of course this is assuming said company has developed and produced a console that mass consumers actually want. But it is a misconception at best to say that if a company produces a console that mass consumers want, they will pay any price for it. That market niche is quite limited. Price matters in increasing adoption rates and consumer base.
As far as price goes, it's in the best interest of a company to either bring down the cost of their console as quickly as possible to improve profit margins or reduce losses, expand their consumer base (broader accessibility through lower pricing) or to add perceived value to an existing product with new features/minor upgrades, a new case/shiny coat of paint, extra storage and bundled software.
And all that still applies, even in the absence of competition.
