Of course PS3 and 360 directly competed.  My point is that the release of one did not immediately cause the other to plummet in sales.  Console competition almost never works that way.  The reason that neither dominated like the PS4 or Switch is that the PS4 was the dominant console of Generation 8 and Switch is the dominant console of Generation 9.  It's not obvious that the Switch is competing with the PS5 now, but it will be obvious by the end of the generation.  PS5 + XBS will never get above 130m.

The_Liquid_Laser said

PS5 + XBS will never get above 130m.

I may have already asked you this so apologies if I've forgotten (I have some memory issues) but if you think the two combined will fall short of 130 million, how much do you think each will sell individually, lifetime?

Okay, you want examples. Well, here you are:

Here's the problem with the games you mentioned: Only two managed over 200k sales in Japan (Soul Sacrifice and Hot Shots Golf), and you forgot about the biggest one (Freedom Wars, with over 300k). The problem is simply that this is not enough to be a killer app. Just for comparison's sake, the Wii U, which sold less than the Vita, still has 8 games that outsold the best-selling SCE Vita game, and by very large margins even. But the Wii U was an outlier with crazy attach rates, so reaching the same crazy numbers ain't necessary - just more than the Vita games achieved.

This is why I say that there's no Killer App from Sony on the Vita. Freedom Wars comes closest to being one, but it's not quite there yet.

As for the other games you mentioned, LBP Vita sold just 20k in Japan, Killzone 40k, Uncharted Golden Abyss at least a respectable 130k, and 90k for Gravity Rush. Even for a console with only 5M sales in Japan, those numbers are not enough to really push much hardware.

Another thing to not are the release dates. Most of the mentioned games came out in 2012 or 2013, so during the handheld's 2 first years. Sony themselves pretty much dropped support for the Vita in late 2013, just finishing the games that were still in development. Of course this will cut a console short. And that's despite both 2013 and 2014 were looking up for the Vita. Had they continued to support the Vita, the sales would certainly have been quite a bit higher. After 2016 sales thus just lingered around until 2020, kept alive by Minecraft and the occasional Otome VN.

Tl;dr, Sony would have needed to develop some more Japan-centric games (which would have been worthwhile since Japan was the only region where the Vita was selling at all) and support the console longer than just until the release of the PS4, and it could have achieved sales similar to the PS3/PS4 despite it's problems.

Sony absolutely could bring a successor to the Vita. Done right this time (System price and value proposition, non-proprietary memory cards, Japan-centric games, long support), and it would certainly sell north of 10M, and how much north entirely depends on well and long Sony would support the system.

I think they are going to be close enough to each other that at this point it is hard to tell which one will come out on top. 

Okay, so if you think they'll land close, can you give me a ballpark number? Rounded to the nearest 5 million if you like?

65 million? 60 million? I just want to be clear and unambiguous here as to your predictions for them.