It’s a catch22. After that generation things became a lot easier to develop for across the board. At the same time I believe became easier to develop the console. Rather than build chipsets entirely in house you just contract a chip manufacturer. And shockingly when your competitor uses the same company things get samey.
I don’t know if this was ever avoidable. The capabilities of modern day processors would be hard to fathom console companies building their own unique variants on. I’d argue if they did consoles would cost even more now than they already do.
It’s interesting to think what could have been. Definitely would have made console reveals more interesting. And even ports more interesting. But I can’t sure for sure better ..
Because Nintendo never figured out Blast Processing. Crucial in developing on most platforms …