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It seems like video game consoles aren't competing based on practicality (hardware) anymore and are mostly just rent seeking with ways to abuse the legal/IP system.

There used to be a much bigger moat to assemble a platform that could play cutting edge games. Now PC game engines/graphics drivers are getting so good the console SDKs aren't such a big boon and the hardware is basically just CotS.

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Yeah. Sony and Nintendo still try to shake things up with their bespoke controllers and hardware doohickeys, but Microsoft's approach is just to release plain old PCs that only run their code.

Nintendo would be successful even without hardware. Their IPs have firmly planted themselves in global awareness to an unimaginable level. They'd give Disney a run for their money.

Then on top of that they built an ecosystem of toys and software to monetize their adoring customers.

Nintendo recognized the deadend of the hardware race in the early 2000s, and continued developing their "mascots" while Sony and MS abandoned theirs. I don't think Microsoft and Sony have the DNA to pull of something like this. They are still software and hardware companies respectively.

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