People forget how much has to change for one video game company to make serious inroads to another company's share of the console market. 

Atari basically imploded leaving the way for the NES. Nintendo was gutsy as all hell back in the day, walking into toy stores, post crash, and trying to get them to stock a video game console. 

Genesis/Megadrive launched up to 2 years earlier, had an amazing ad campaign, and ran with the familiarity of the Sega Arcade brand. 

PS1 dominated its generation because, a mass 3rd party exodus from Nintendo, Sega imploding with Saturn, and the huge difference in production costs between N64 carts, and PS1 discs. Not to mention PS1 launching a year earlier, with an insanely aggressive price point.

Then you have the 360/Ps3 gen, where...

MS launched a year ahead.

PS3 was being sold $200 over 360.

There was a mass exodus of 3rd party devs from being Sony exclusive developers to making games for both 360, and PS3.

360 was better at running 3rd party games, making it arguably the more powerful console.

MS had a really damned good 1st party lineup throughout the gen.

Even with all that happening 360 still came slightly behind PS3 in lifetime sales. MS played the best possible hand it could, and Sony played pretty much the worst possible hand, with the lone exception being their stellar 1st party output late in the gen.

Finally, we have the current gen where MS pretty much burned their entire brand to the ground in 2013, sold their weaker console for $100 more, put their best content on PC, and basically gave up on making quality 1st party content outside of Forza, Gears, Halo (without buying up an already existing studio, which is just another variant on the old moneyhat trick). On the flipside Sony had insane 1st party output this gen, and had a huge number of 3rd party titles either launch 1st on Playstation, or outright never come to Xbox.

Oh, and as far as Nintendo goes, they had to massively change their strategies with both the Wii, and the Switch in order to make a comeback. I really don't think the Switch or the Wii needs explaining, so I'll leave it at that. 

That's why Microsoft divide their focus across all aspect from  subscription based model , PC windows (even Steam) and Xcloud. Console is just an old remnant for Microsoft. 

Xbox Series are just a placeholder for PC games in console form, Soon they will start to decrease the production and making  many variant of Xbox Series. Xbox console for Microsoft is just a medium while content is the main sales. 

Xbox are trying to get rid the stigma as console business oriented to subscription and game content company. 

We will not see any difference from hardware sales point or i can bet that next gen It will be landslide for PS5 over X series on Hardware. But a good bump on software and subscription revenue for Microsoft Xbox division.  

I will take a wait and see approach. We will know how things look after a few months of the next-gen consoles being on the market.

But considering that pricing hasn't been revealed... And Sony hasn't showcased it's new console, policies and so forth, they could make a big blunder. Or they could do the complete opposite.

Can go either way until we know all the details... Until then it's all just speculation.

Yeah, I really want Gamepass to do well. It's their best idea in years. It's only at around 10 million subscribers these days though. That's including PC and XB1 users. So probably 1/4th or 1/5th of all XB1 users have Gamepass. For a subscription service that seems really low. 

I think around this point during the start of gens 7 and 8 most people knew it was going to be a train wreck. PS3 was already doomed by a massive $200 price difference announced at E3 2006 in early May. XB1 was more or less toast around May 2013 too. People saw Sony having a disaster in May 2006. People saw MS having a disaster by May 2013. 

We are this far into next gen talk, and so far there is no large scale disaster for Sony. And the entire point of this thread was to point out just how many mountains need to be moved to change the sales ratio in a console war. 

Their controller design brought forth allot of ire from gaming circles.

But you are right, that there hasn't been anything "large scale" that has shaken things up... But again, that could potentially still happen, Sony hasn't unveiled it's console or it's pricing.

Nah, MS it wouldn’t take much for MS to retake the US. They’ll never beat Sony WW but they can do way better than Xbone did.

We don’t know the prices yet, not much point in speculation. Also weird that you seem to take issue with MS buying studios, yet that “great” Sony first party support is almost entirely reliant on studios they bought. ND, Insomniac, Sucker Punch, GG, Media Molecule, Bend, even pieces of other studios like London came from buying Psygnosis.

You can’t really build a stable of good first party studios without buying. Unless you’re Nintendo of course but they’re the exception to most MicroSony rules.

It was technically weaker from my memory, but the architecture of PS3 was tricky to work with. That being said the same thing happened the generation before. I own dozens of games on both the xbox and PS2 or the gamecube and PS2 (because of my friends preference and the most spoiled part of my childhood) and in 95% or more of the cases the PS2 version was better in terms of graphics and performance. The PS2 was considered weaker than the original Xbox and Gamecube yet was better for 3rd party games. So that being said if PS5 sells a lot better than the Xbox Series X, I could see 3rd titles eventually performing better or the same despite the hardware disadvantage if devs prioritize it. That being said, the consoles are a lot closer this generation in architecture than they were back in the PS2 or PS3 eras so it's not as much work to port things meaning XSX has a greater chance of keeping that advantage over PS5. I'm sure there are still differences, but I'm not a developer so I don't know if they are meaningful. I expect the PS5 to win the next generation and a good chance to win in the USA if they can put out good exclusives in a timely manner.

Huge changes in marketshare require huge changes in the industry. And yet every single generation at least one of the console makers makes major moves in order to shake things up. Sometimes 2 or more make make major moves. The unrealistic thing is to expect that no one is going to make a major move.

While I do think Sony is going to win and have no interest in getting the next xbox myself. I do think MS is making some pretty notable changes going into their next gen.

They will have the value win with the Xbox Series S (assuming it exists)
The performance win with the Xbox Series X
They will have marketing that comes with being the performance king
Their work into Gamepass has put it in a pretty great position as a killer service
They have purchased some pretty great studios so we will see how their games go

So I wouldn't count them out just yet. Don't forget the major issues that the 360 had with RROD and it's Kinect fetish by the end while the Ps3's end was very fap worthy. Also the 360 had paid online and Ps3 had free online.