I have to agree that your opinion seems somewhat naive. Maybe thats not the right word, maybe myopic?

First off there are a lot of "ifs" in your theory, funny thing is; if you wanna run by that logic then every victory across every feild was based on the fact that this wouldn't have been the case if something else wasn't.

The problem with that is that these things (especially with consoles) don't happen overnight and aren't spur of the moment decisions. Lots of planning goes into these things. I can gaurantee you that any company that is spending billions in R&D and manufacturing is taking what they are doing seriously. The foundations of there strategies may be collectively flawed, but they took what they were doing seriously regardless. 

If one company succeeds and becomes more successful than the rest, its unfair to trivialize their achievements by saying eg. "Sony PS1 wouldn't have won if nintendo put a disc drive in their console instead of a catridge". Fundamentally, that statement, in hindsight may be very true, but both companies had a vision as to where they saw their consoles going, one was right and one was wrong so one won and one lost. That is basically how everything works.

Take your MS exacple for instance, you say MS should have taken making the XBO dev friendly as a priority. What MS did is basically make a direct iteration of 360 2.0. The took every hardware aspect of the 360 and directly improved on it and improced on their cooling to arrive at the XBO. The XBO is basically what a 360 would have been if it was made in 2013. Its as easy to develop for as the 360 was to develop for, the reason it looks like they have done something "wrong" now, is just that the PS4 is not only easier to develop for than a PS3, its also easier to develop for than the XBO. MS made remarkable hardware with the XBO taking into account factors that they felt would define the design of their architecture. And sony did the same.

The simple truth here is that if comparing the PS4/XBO, it just goes to show one thing, sony are just all round beter at making hardware (this should be expected). Sony has always made great playstation hardware, their hardware has just never before now put how games are actually made first. For the first time, sony and MS set out to make the same kinda hardware, no naturally the company better at making hardware would shine here. So should we say, XBO will be winning now if sony weren't as good hardware manufacturers?

Come on man thats just BS. I dunno if you have something against sony, and your posts could lead one to think so.... but you are underselling it. What PS1 did to increase the size of the market was by making "maturing" the industry. It made gaming "cool" so to speak and primarily sold to an older and more mature audience. The PS2 to carried that along and added the bonus of having the cheapest DVD player at the time. 

How can you possibly tag the success of a console over the course of a 5-6yr generation simply on availability in countries??????

mmm, 360 was a monster piece of hardware for a console released in Nov 2005 ! The combination Xenon and ATI's Xenos was something impressive, superior to any PC released at the same time, considering how much it was powerful, balanced and efficient, and all this in a 'close environment=console' ! Don't even compare that monster of XBox 360 with this current underpowered piece of hardware of XBox One(compared with 360).

But I might understand other points you made. The fact is Sony got stronger with PS4 and MS got weaker with XOne.  360 had several strong points VS PS3, most of all in the first 3 years : 1) very powerful, balanced and friendly to develop for piece of hardware=better multiplatform games. 2) Released 1 full year before PS3 in NA and Japan and 16 months before in Europe ---> 360 had already a very strong line up when PS3 was released. 3) much cheaper than PS3.

Do you see how many advantages MS lost This Gen with XOne ?!  This is the key point; Sony got stronger and MS weaker.  

I'm not saying XBone is bad; OMG it will deliver a great game experience, as any new console. Halo5 will be impressive I'm sure.   I just believe MS should do more after that jewel of XBox 360, only this :)

Malstrom's more than a little nutso in some cases (why i stopped reading him like 3 years ago), but here's something from an earlier age from him, indicating that while overall console ownership is up, the rate of "household penetration" is down, or was 5 years ago

http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/email-comic-book-industry-and-the-end-of-the-core/

The notion that Sony grew gaming because it made it more "mature" is, simply, bunk. It's based on Sony's ability to have a bigger presence in Europe and developing countries, as well as population growth and the rise of multi-console ownership as the NES generation "matured" and got more disposable income.

Sony does certainly get credit for becoming the industry standard, which is due to their vigorous efforts to engage third parties from day one. That's what helped them out of the PS3 jam, because third parties were still making PS3 games (even if no more exclusives) even when the console was in the sales toilet. You can't get support like that all in a day. But their ability to "grow" the industry is largely due to the fact that they were a truly global corporation entering a playing field dominated by much smaller players. Their ability to dominate the competition (not just win, but dominate. This is the point i'm trying to make against the thread's thesis) is due to the multifarious mistakes their competitors have made in all gens but the 7th.

Sega was already pushing gaming into the more cinematic/violent/teen-centric direction, so Sony really didn't start that.

What Sony does is they simply make no-nonsense consoles -- powerful hardware with strong third party support and then sell them for a reasonable price. With solid marketing behind it. 

Then they wait for their competition to screw up. Sega/Nintendo/Microsoft all repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot every generation, which makes it easy for Sony to dominate. Using a tennis analogy it's like a tennis match where one player keeps making unforced errors ... it makes it very easy for the other player to win the match.

The only exception was of course the last console cycle, but really think even there it took a controller miracle from Nintendo and Sony starting at $600 freaking dollars and even *still*, the PS3 is going to end up very close to the leading Wii's LTD by the time its discontinued.

That means even when virtually everything goes right for Nintendo + MS and a lot of things go wrong for Sony, Nintendo/MS can still barely win.

3/4 last generation generations (so basically the last 20 years or so), Sony has dominated fairly easily. In hindsight really "winning" the console wars is less about miracle home runs and more about whoever makes the fewest mistakes. 

Looks like we're headed towards a 

PS4: 90-100 mill, XBox 1: 40-45 mill, Wii U - 18-20 mill 

generation. 

I'm not disagreeing with you about this right now, but isn't it too early to call? They launched at 3 months without any Japanese focused game that really demands a PS4 (MGS, Yakuza, Dinasty Warriors, it's all on PS3 or Vita at the same time). Some decent Japanese games could really change the game over there. 

If you looked at the PS3 in 2009, it was a flop and a joke compared to the competitors and the Wii was a beast. Right now, PS3 simply crushes the competitors and can even end 1st after all this time. 

Despite that, I don't buy the "Japan doesn't want consoles anymore" thing. Sorry. After the videogame crash, everybody said consoles were dead and everyone would play on PC. Some Nintendo magic and now everyone still plays on consoles and PC gaming is pretty much a niche thing.

Japan isn't the market it used to be even 5-6 years ago. 

Nintendo will probably launch a hybrid handheld/console in 2016-17 in Japan, that will likely have some success, but in the post-iPhone world its probably best to temper expectations. 

I think a lot of Sonys domination in the hardware space is based on reputation and good will. I'm 21 years old and have it stuck in my head for as far back as I can remember that Sony products were always high end and incredibly reliable; This thought was enforced by the fact that we
A) Bought PS1 when it came out, the fat boxy model and it still works
B) Bought PS2 when it came out, the fat boxy model and it still works
and C) Bought PS3 first slim when it came, still works.

Couple that with the fact that they have a history of pioneering bleeding edge standards (blu-ray, 4K anyone?) and it should be obvious why consumers will jump on a $400 console that's setting the standard in performance.
Oh. And dem long game legs too. They support their hardware in the beginning, in the middle and in the end. It's like drinking a fine whine that only gets better as it ages. Just my incredibly biased yet grounded in reality point of view.

Well, it looks like we will have to agree to disagree... As I said, people said the same about the crash and we are still discussing consoles today. About the hybrid, it's just a rumour and it has severe flaws on it. The original rumour actually had specs that simply didn't make sense, simply wasn't a working hardware design. 

It's a reference to the best PS3 launch title ever!