My dream machine for 1990? After thinking it over for 5 minutes (like many actual hardware manufacturers.) -
Twin 68000 cpus, clocked at the highest speed we can get under cost, and with just enough ram to allow them to smoothly share the workload together, instead of the extra complexity being a handicap, the way it was for the Saturn. Basically, almost the same set up as Sega's super scaler titles in the arcade. In theory, it should also be able to handle raycasting engines and smooth polygons for the time.
Except we cut everything else we can. Completely. There's no other way to get this in under cost.
We even put the soundchips on the carts, with the understanding that no game will even boot up without one - our machine will check. On the more consumer friendly side,there's slots available for slight performance upgrades, ala the N64's expansion pack - including the soundchips themselves, if you need the reassurance beyond our lock-out system, or have a specific preference for one type of sound over another.
It's kind of important, because we're about to lose control of the entire process, and I'd hate to imagine players getting [ over by this design the way 7800 owners did.
Because, somehow, we totally forgot to patent or trademark our machines. Suddenly, anyone can undercut us on the part of the console game that loses money. Prices will drop dramatically, people will chose their favorite manufacturers...
Or at least, the ones they can afford...
And we'll be forced to just make state of the art software/game engines, while selling upgrades to these machines, kind of like other companies I've heard of....
Also, with enough demand for 68000 chips driving the manufacturing costs way down, we might look at expanding our format beyond consoles. It's not like PCs were taken seriously as gaming machines yet, and just wait until we look at mobile...
Mind you, I have no idea what I'm talking about - I'm just a guy who really wanted affordable arcade style sprites for a generation, before we moved on to polygons.