Yes. 802.11ac, for example, takes both a faster transceiver and a bunch of firmware support, and time to market with this features was a big driver of sales. And that was an ongoing process - ac is actually a set of features, and it's taking years for all of them to be implemented.

Similarly, cheaper chips often don't support optional performance-enhancing features at layers 2 and 3 (link and MAC) that boost performance without any hardware investment.