I believe Sony have played their hand perfectly with the PS4pro. What I think they did was force Microsoft's hand so they had to react much sooner than they wanted. Sony carefully 'under-promoted' the Pro to make sure only those in the know would rush out to buy one initially, knowing full well that MS would seize upon this and heavily promote the Scorpio, cementing it in the minds of a much larger audience.
But why would they do that? I've always said that Sony play chess while Microsoft play poker, and this is a perfect example. There HAS to be a cooling off period between the release of a mid gen upgrade and the release of a brand new generation, otherwise a lot of people will feel slighted. Given that Sony have cleverly positioned the Pro as an upgrade while Microsoft have pushed the Scorpio as a huge leap over the Pro, Sony are sitting in a less vulnerable position, rather like Nintendo has, which has clearly worked for them. It's a slightly different scenario but I haven't seen many people complaining that they bought the Wiiu for certain games only to have those games held back and release on the Switch to give it sales merit. Why? Because they cut and ran, which was the perfect thing to do. Enough time had past for people to forget and move on. This of course meant Nintendo had to be VERY confident in their new console. They obviously had the right to feel that confident. Just look at the sales.
This leaves Sony in prime position with plenty of wiggle room concerning Microsoft's inevitable next gen console. There is no way Microsoft can release a next gen console only one year and six months after the Scorpio, unless they're willing to risk a huge backlash from a lot of their fans. However, Sony CAN risk releasing another console two and a half years after the Pro. They'll certainly get some backlash but nothing like Microsoft. This is why I feel Sony will bring the launch day forward and give themselves as long as they can to gain a substantial lead before Microsoft actually launch their next console.
IF Sony can offer 4K at 60fps on every single forward conpatible game and the majority of exclusive PS5 games then the 'power' agrument is almost impossible to express to the average Joe. Right now it's a simple matter of promoting measurable and visible differences because stepping up from 30fps to 60fps and 1080p to 4K (the games that will be used to promote both consoles, MS having the advantage here) is much easier to promote to the masses. I am absolutely certain that next gen consoles will NOT be promoted with 8K and 120fps so that leaves NO metric to differentiate other than subtle things that are very difficult to express in screenshots or videos. So therefore next gen will be fought even footedly, leaving Sony with the advantage of releasing first.
The PS5 Exists.
