MS has never been at the top so I can't consider them truly in the discussion. With that said, all 3 have had their moments of coming off a high and losing sight of things. Hard to say which was the worst. Ps2 to Ps3 was pretty bad but so was X360 to Xbox one, potentially the worst. Wii to WiiU was not great either, but Nintendo is the least offender in this regard.

Hard to say tbh. Nintendo on top released the 3DS/WiiU. Although the Wii U was underpowered and had its flaws that generation still had. a lot of amazing games.
Sony at the top released the PS3 which was a really bulky/overp[riced console at launch with lackluster online gaming capabilities but over the generation their online service improved and so did their first-party output.
Microsoft at the top released the Xbox One which at launch forced consumers to buy the Kinect and had a focus on being more of an entertainment system than a gaming one. But this was short-lived as they got a new head of Xbox, dropped the Kinect after 6 months, and later in the generation, they revamped their first party and introduced gamepass.

But right now Sony is on top again and the PS5 is a pretty good console and the PS2 was a good console to follow up the PS1.

Bolded: This makes me shudder at the thought of MS being at the top.

I believe you are forgetting Embracer group which from what we have seen has purchased a lot of studios.  Yes, I am not denying that MS deserve the attention pretty much stated its because of their size and history.

Do not limit the discussion to just the hardware, we need to view the entire business as a whole and the decisions from hardware, Sofware, services, support and games.  

I did mention most of those things besides maybe support. All 3 have been good with indies. MS with live arcade and ID@Xbox, Nintendo with showcasing indies in their directs and Sony with the support they put towards indies the last few generations. 

What a hyperbole statement with nothing to actually back it up. Last I checked, every game on Game Pass can be bought separately and is not required to access any games. Unlike PS Now which is required to access ps1-ps3 games and will continue that way with the new PS+ essential and Premium subscription. Tell me if I'm wrong, but even Nintendo Online Expansion Pack legacy games require a subscription to play and can't be bought separately. So please, tell us how anti-consumer MS is when the competition is the one actually hiding games behind a subscription?  

The doubling cost of Gold was dumb and they realize that and backed off within a day. If that is the worst thing MS has done, and they didn't even follow through with it, then whatever. 

As far as I remember, Sony planned to bundle a camera with every PS4 at first, but by E3, had decided not to. Sony may have figured a $400 price point without the camera was better than $500 with it, which would've been the right move considering that's what XB One did and it backfired. MS also knew Sony had purchased Gaikai for cloud streaming at the very latest by mid 2012 when it was officially announced. These are just a few of the reasons that MS may have assumed Sony would go even more entertainment beyond PS3 and more even more online. If you're XB, the last thing you want to allow is for PS to get a head start. MS saw how valuable the lead was with PS2 vs XBOX and 360 vs PS3. So from that perspective, MS really wouldn't care too much about online anti consumerism because that's what they may have thought Sony was going to do. It's also possible MS didn't care about Sony at all and made all these decisions on their own accord. It's hard to say exactly which is correct, I'm just offering another possibility that led to the same outcome, but with slightly less greedy intentions.

This is true. Early adopters are more hardcore. I think I may have been incorrect in saying the price was the biggest factor, but price would be a close second. Thinking it through more, I'd say the 365 day head start the PS3 gave the 360 was the biggest problem. Now if PS3 launched alongside 360, the sales gap likely would've been much smaller. Once you gain a lead and momentum it takes a heck of a lot for the competition to overcome that. PS3 was slowly able to, but the biggest momentum shifter was when they launched a much cheaper Slim model due to not only manufacturing advancements but by also removing BC. Something the casuals don't care near as much about as the hardcore.

Well if Sony did scrap the camera bundle idea for PS4, that pretty much proves your point. The PS3 no doubt offered better value than XB One, especially since that was in 2006, but it's hard to say if it was a better decision or not based on the launch and outcome vs PS2. XB One launched alongside PS4, so that's much easier to compare than 360 to PS3 with the year long launch gap. Nobody can really say if PS3 launching alongside 360 would've made a huge difference for certain, we can only make an educated guess.

Turning physical discs into nothing more than a digital license is erasing used games. That they were planning to allow select retailers to buy back that license to sell it on to the next customer doesn't change the fact that the disc is essentially useless on its own. The plans would have changed physical discs into nothing more than a download code. Which is happening anyway with more and more games :( (However you can still trade those games since the disc remains the 'owner' of the license)

I don't know enough about Microsoft to know what they're like on top.
Sony starts pumping up prices because "If people want it, they'll pay for it" at the end of the PS2 era - but I don't recall anything crazy out of the PS4 era.

I find Nintendo is the opposite. They're most arrogance and quality of support is worst when they're at the bottom. A good example is when their CEO, Hiroshi Yamauchi, began insulting RPG fans because he was angry with PSX finding success with the genre. At the same time, Yamauchi became hostile toward third parties, particularly Square, closing off possibility of Square developing more games for Nintendo platforms. Nintendo would also fluff up their announcements by showing many games that would either never come to materialize or appear years later as something different than what we were shown - sometimes even coming out on other consoles. During the SNES, Wii/DS, and Switch eras - this stuff didn't happen nearly as often (the only even remotely problematic game that comes to mind right now of those announced during the Switch era is Breath of the Wild 2). And being on top in the handheld didn't seem to stop their bad behaviour in the home console sphere, because they had Gameboy/GBA and 3DS during the N64, Gamecube, and Wii U eras.