I have a feeling Sony could see significant decline next gen. Here is my logic before you jump on me:
- PS3's first couple years ($599) hurt Sony's image a great deal, in addition to many other things in the mid 2000s like the rootkit scandal, arrogant comments, removal of BC, the death of Lik Sang, etc..
- Going by Sony's recent track record, they will probably launch with the most expensive console, which will make it a difficult sell for the mass market.
- Sony also seems to be the least successful of the big three at catering to the expanded audience.
-With PS3 still maintaining pretty strong momentum, the transition of consumers over from PS3 to PS4 will likely be a long one, as was the case with DS to 3DS, and to an extent, GBA to DS.
- It looks likely that it won't launch until 2014 at this point, making it difficult to complete with the other consoles that have had time to establish a game library and devs to get used to developing for them.
- The big sellers on Sony consoles when they were in their prime were usually third party games, but now MS has taken that throne for the most part. The Xbox 360 pretty much now serves the purpose Sony once held.
- Japan and Europe are by far Sony's strongest markets for the past 10 years or so, but now it seems Nintendo all but owns Japan and much of Europe is in the midst of a financial crisis that would probably make the likely expensive PS4 a tougher sell.
I think Vita's performance is a foreshadowing of what we'll see for PS4.
Now, I could be completely off with the as I never expected for PS3 to have the legs it's had, so you just never know with this industry. I'm just trying to make a logical prediction based of a plethora of evidence I've seen.