Replayability suffers because of the predetermined progress of consoles, console manufacturers, and game markets.
Instead of console success being tied to real world videogame history, there could be new experiences in every game if there was a mode to play with organic console development and competition. Consoles might fail or succeed based on in-game market competition and players will have to keep track of which consoles or brands are doing well.
Console Manufacturers
Some major console manufacturers: Commodore, Atari, Coleco, Sega, Nintendo, Microsoft.
For each manufacturer, have at least 1 console (and handhelds?) for each game generation. Track the size of games library, avg game rating, fanbase, and revenue for each console.
This marketshare is used to calculate a "success" rating for each manufacturer. Depending on the success rating, this manufacturer will or won't produce new consoles (handhelds, next generation, etc.)
Market
Overall game market trends upwards, but with occasional expansions or contractions (like 1983 games crash), which will affect the overall success rating for manufacturers, possibly killing companies off or reducing the quality of their consoles.
Game starts with smaller pool of manufacturers, slowly adding or subtracting them as the years progress. Dead brands can be revived years later, sometimes successfully, sometimes not
The success of player games on a platform could positively impact the overall success of a manufacturer -- if you have many high quality, bestselling games on a console, that console's marketshare + success rating increases. The success of player consoles could force competitors out of the market.
In period where console market is high revenue, new competitors could flood the market and precipitate a crash.
Console Development
Timer determines release of next console (e.g. 2-4 years) with higher success ratings reducing this time, lower success ratings increasing this timer
Each "generation" has a set min/max for compute + graphics capabilities, but manufacturer success rating affects each console's capabilities
Some variability, so that periodically low success companies produce great consoles, and high success companies produce terrible ones
Extras
CEOs contact players to ask for exclusivity rights more frequently, based on their own success ratings and player studio fanbase. Struggling brands might gamble and try to get popular IPs to bolster their sales, bigger brands do the same when their marketshare is very similar to another brand.
News updates visible to players telling them major shifts in the games market, the closing/reopening of games manufacturers, success or failures in the console market
New menus to track console market history, current console market, and future console releases
Replayability suffers because of the predetermined progress of consoles, console manufacturers, and game markets.
Instead of console success being tied to real world videogame history, there could be new experiences in every game if there was a mode to play with organic console development and competition. Consoles might fail or succeed based on in-game market competition and players will have to keep track of which consoles or brands are doing well.
Console Manufacturers
Market
Console Development
Extras