> You "can" have subsidized retail hardware
But neither corporation's shareholders wanted them to for capital reasons.
> or custom hardware sold for a profit
But that'd be an insane waste of money for a platform that's more inconvenient to develop for.
> Agreeing to collude on one issue that is mutually beneficial does not preclude competition in other ways.
But when you're in danger of going under, it's time to stop leaving cash on the table properly, especially when you will win a bidding war.
> There have been tens of thousands lawsuits related to price-fixing and other anti-competitive behavior by corporations
But not against these corporations in this context.
> you saw heavily subsidized high end hardware be the norm for consoles for decades
Because in that span of time it was a good idea: they had lots of cash and were pushing the envelope of what hardware was capable of.
> Then suddenly Microsoft and Sony stop doing so at the exact same time
Because in that span of time, it stopped being a good idea: PC hardware had started being ahead of what they could offer. And you are calling an eleven year period "exact same time".
> extremely overt but also impossible to prove so long as they didn't leave a paper trail.
In other words, you have literally zero evidence this is true and are just going off of vibes, even though as I've just laid out, everything that happened is exactly what you'd expect to have happened if they weren't.