People need to remember the psp was a huge seller and a very successful portable and rather a clunky design with its it's umd drive and relatively short battery life. There is no reason Sony can't compete and even outsell Nintendo in this sector.
There are lots of advantages Sony can bring to their new portable including a platform that is easy to migrate titles to, third party support, more competitive pricing, not huge licensing costs from nvidia, better controls, superior online functionality, integrating with home consoles.
It's really more about getting the product and marketing right rather than some sort of consumer resistance to Sony as a portable console brand. Sony only has to offer portable performance at Switch level which is easy to do. It doesn't have to provide a enhanced docked mode.
It will be commercially clear that if the Switch continues to sell well and there isnt a sales drop off that the hybrid format is a winner and Sony will need to at least try to stop a large migration of Sony users going to Nintendo who decide they do want both a portable and home console that runs the same software. It's not like they can ignore it they have to try to make something more appealing to end consumers to compete with Switch. It's commercial reality.
