Took the words out of my errrrr keyboard :P

well firstly mass market doesn't care about technological advancement to an extent , the care more about how it translates into stuff they like.

On top of this better hardware = higher price point as the price of the product goes up the consumer needs a more signifcant reason to purchase the product.

Realy it's down to the utilisation of the technology as opposed to the advancement of the technology , Innovation > Invention although it is true that alot of innovation would be impossible without invention so they go hand in hand in a sense.

damn you beat me to it. i wa sgoing to say about super nintendo being more powerful than megadrive

Is there really an answer. What you should ask is why the snes beat the megadrive(genesis), why the ps1 beat the N64 and so on. And then from all the answers see if there is a common point. If not then maybe there isn't a reason.

I was literally just thinking about this.

Why do the weaker consoles often win?

I have some sales statistics that prove this

Weakest        Sales(M)             Strongest         Sales(M)

Snes               49.08                  Megadrive        30.75

PS1                 102.49                N64                  32.93

PS2                 117.89                Xbox                 24.76

GB                   118.69                GG                    10.67

I do not see price point as an issue here, as the gamecube was released at $200 in 2001 and the PS2 was released in 1999 at $300. I would rether attribute these sales to marketing as by 1999 the now common playstation brand was very popular whereas nintendos still illusive Dolphin project was not gaining much recognition. It's all down to marketing.

wrong, the genesis was more powerful than the snes
the n64 was more powerful than the psx,
dreamcast, xbox and gamecube were all more powerful than the ps2.

better luck next time dragon, first look up the facts ;).

The SNES was more powerful than the Mega Drive.

The PSX was technically superior in some ways since it was CD-based. The Saturn was the weakest out of the 3.

The PS2 was more powerful than the Dreamcast, thus it was not the weakest.

Do your research.

 The genesis has a more power cpu, yes, but the snes had much better graphical and sound co-processors. In addition, the carts could supply their own custom chips to take things even futher (e.g. Super FX).

Indeed.

Which is not surprising since it launched over a year later.

It's not always the guy in the middle. NES, Gameboy, and for the current generation the Wii and DS contradict your claim.

In any case, the most powerful console has never dominated. The SNES is the only example of the most powerful console winning a generation, but for the most part, it was a in close race with the Genesis.

Based on history, it makes more sense to release an underpowered machine. Powerful consoles are generally released later and are more expensive the competition which is always a considerable handicap. In the case of the SNES, Nintendo had the advantage of it's dominance and popularity from the previous generation, and yet it still managed to lose significant marketshare.