[somenameforme]

Since you're ignoring words and just repeating the same fallacies, I'll respond in bullet point format to make it easier for you to read:

- Retail vs customized hardware has nothing whatsoever to do with subsidized or not. You can have subsidized retail hardware, or custom hardware sold for profit.

- Agreeing to collude on one issue that is mutually beneficial does not preclude competition in other ways.

- There have been tens of thousands lawsuits related to price-fixing and other anti-competitive behavior by corporations, and an unknowable of actions that were carried out with no consequences whatsoever, like this one. It happens constantly, because it's highly profitable and the consequences even when caught tend to be negligible.

---

Back to words: Sony and Microsoft were in a prisoner's dilemma with regards to subsidization and high end hardware. If they both collude, then they both see major profit increases and live happily ever after. But if either of them actually competed then they'd end up crushing the other one and take the market, at least in large part, for themselves.

In a competitive environment, this is precisely why you saw heavily subsidized high end hardware be the norm for consoles for decades. Neither could risk the possibility of not subsidizing. Then suddenly Microsoft and Sony stop doing so at the exact same time. It was both extremely overt but also impossible to prove so long as they didn't leave a paper trail.

[pie_flavor]

"You're ignoring what I said", says the guy who proceeds to repeat himself ignoring what I said.

> 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.

[somenameforme]

I'm not ignoring what you're saying - you're just repeating plainly falsifiable or illogical claims. By contrast you've laid out no reasonable arguments to what I've said. You even tried to claim companies engaging in anticompetitive was some sort of inconceivable conspiracy, in spite of the fact that Sony and Microsoft have been repeatedly busted for anticompete conspiracies, even within the Playstation and XBox section of their business. You're concocting unsound bad faith arguments, and then repeating them.

And once again, if either company actually competed on hardware from the PS4 gen onward, they would have dominated the market. They chose to collude instead which maximized revenue, but only thanks to the collusion. And the person who paid for this is the consumer who was left paying much more than they normally would to get much less than they normally would.