Microsoft came out of no-where with the original XBox. You had Playstation, Nintendo, and Sega. It can happen, just need the right motivations for customers.
And if 5G lives up to it's promises, this will be one of those first great products to take advantage of that extra bandwidth.
The XBox also had the luxury of amazing timing, although it's unclear whether it was intentional or luck.
Sony dominated generations 5 and 6 against weak competition. The Dreamcast was an outright failure that was discontinued a few months before the Xbox's release, and the Gamecube was a commercial disappointment; which practically handed Microsoft a #2 showing.
Right now all three incumbents appear strong and evenly matched, which may not leave Google much of a hole.
Microsoft Xbox persevered only because of Microsoft's deep pockets not because they necessarily did anything different enough to attract gamers. It was not a successful console.
To add on to this, I remember Gates said _something publicly like "I expect to lose about a billion dollars on it before it pans out" when launching xbox. I remember that it just seemed a very genuine "I think we should be in this market long term, and I know we'll lose a lot of money to get there. But we can afford it."
Success? You mean they saw it as one area they did better? Microsoft considering killing off the xbox after the fist iteration because the sales figures were not where they hoped it would be and it was costing them.
And if 5G lives up to it's promises, this will be one of those first great products to take advantage of that extra bandwidth.