Historically, just making a good product hasn’t been enough to take away marketshare, the competition has to make poor decisions.

PS1 was able to succeed Genesis as the “cool and edgy” console because Sega was losing customer confidence by having so many products on the market (Genesis, Game Gear, Nomad, CD, 32x, Pico) then botching Saturn by making it difficult to develop for and having the weird early launch that pissed off developers and retailers. Then Nintendo lost support of the major Japanese 3rd parties by going with cartridges.

With 360, Microsoft was able to gain a bunch of marketshare from Sony mostly due to Blu-Ray causing PS3 to cost $600 (at a huge loss) and being more difficult to develop for, making many multiplats inferior despite being more powerful 360.

Sony was able to claw back a bunch of that marketshare because Microsoft had the terrible idea to make Kinect mandatory (motion gaming was on the decline at this time and it caused XBO to be $100 more than PS4) and the whole DRM fiasco.

Without those major mistakes in each generation than you likely wouldn’t have seen PS1 dominate the market, 360 take half of the PS2 audience or PS4 retake a large part of that audience. Sony didn’t make any major mistakes with PS5 for Microsoft to capitalize on and steal marketshare so it’s essentially a continuation of the previous generation.

While what you say is mostly true. Sony aso knocked out the park when it comes to exclusives on PS4, that's why the domination is even worse this gen. while Microsoft didn't even have one exclusive  sell 10 million. 

I'd rather be hearing about Series X/S vs PS5 comments since that's far more relevant to today. Like, how has there been seemingly no improvement despite there being much more parity between Series X and PS5 than the generation prior and also having a more budget friendly option in the Series S? And then there's also putting all their first party titles on Game Pass on day one along with several good to great third party releases? Like, how has there not been any change? It baffles me.

They would have sold a bit more with better specs, but I doubt 80 million. Again, specs don't sell systems for long periods. The GameCube was many times more powerful than the PS2, for example, but in the end, its software was lacking and that is why they lost so bad.

It's unshakable. Software is the driver of longevity, not hardware specs. They simply play an early role in new adoption, which helps, yes, but Sony didn't sell 117 million PS4's mainly because it had a 50% more powerful graphics card.

On this I disagree.  MS was coming into the Xbox one era with a lot of good will even with the RROD from the 360 era.  I remember a lot of people was very hyped for their showing of the new console.  After that conference with Don, everything spiraled all out of control from bad to worse.  The focus on the system, the cost of the system with Kinect,  The power of the system compared to PS4.  When games started to hit and the games had clear very obvious advantages over the Xbox one with the PS4 being 100 dollar cheaper, it was no way any particular gamer cared enough about having Kinect to justify getting an Xbox over a PS.

The whole direction that Don was going was just not resonating with console gamers and it was a huge miss, even epic.  At MS response was what we know it to be, they got rid of Don, put Phil in charge but as we saw, it took years for Phil to even get the bad taste of Kinect and the Xbox one out of most gamers mouth.  The number of studios and games were not coming fast enough and all the while Sony was knocking out bangers after Bangers.  

While I do agree that software drives hardware, having bad and costly hardware can kill any advantage of software.  MS cannot replicate how Nintendo work because Nintendo has a history of content and characters not to mention they do not play in the same retail space.  MS direct competition is Sony and as the other poster said they share the majority of the same games.  Weak hardware is a big key to what most gamers play which is 3rd party content and thus the weak hardware had a significant problem with MS being able to compete for years.

On this I disagree.  MS was coming into the Xbox one era with a lot of good will even with the RROD from the 360 era.  I remember a lot of people was very hyped for their showing of the new console.  After that conference with Don, everything spiraled all out of control from bad to worse.  The focus on the system, the cost of the system with Kinect,  The power of the system compared to PS4.  When games started to hit and the games had clear very obvious advantages over the Xbox one with the PS4 being 100 dollar cheaper, it was no way any particular gamer cared enough about having Kinect to justify getting an Xbox over a PS.

The whole direction that Don was going was just not resonating with console gamers and it was a huge miss, even epic.  At MS response was what we know it to be, they got rid of Don, put Phil in charge but as we saw, it took years for Phil to even get the bad taste of Kinect and the Xbox one out of most gamers mouth.  The number of studios and games were not coming fast enough and all the while Sony was knocking out bangers after Bangers.  

While I do agree that software drives hardware, having bad and costly hardware can kill any advantage of software.  MS cannot replicate how Nintendo work because Nintendo has a history of content and characters not to mention they do not play in the same retail space.  MS direct competition is Sony and as the other poster said they share the majority of the same games.  Weak hardware is a big key to what most gamers play which is 3rd party content and thus the weak hardware had a significant problem with MS being able to compete for years.

Weak hardware wasn't the One's biggest problem, though. The PS3 was "bad hardware", but that too wasn't its biggest issue. Price/messaging/lack of early marketing (all mismanagement by the higher ups) caused a far bigger mess (like the X1), but they overcame that by pumping out high quality, exclusive experiences, eventually getting the price in check, and flipping their messaging on its head. I'm not saying being notably weaker than the PS4 didn't hurt at all, but I'd wager stronger software would have done more for lifetime sales.

The 360's early days were the Crème de la crème of console software and that was the biggest reason it was so desired then. This was despite its initial fail rate. I had several of them go bad and still couldn't live without one. It was simply that good! Constant, strong software overcame shortcomings and Xbox LIVE was top of its class — largely unchallenged by PSN. They lost the plot with the Xbox One and the hardware was a smaller piece of the how. 

Where we fully agree is with the Don Mattrick stuff. 

While the PS3 hardware took more effort to get the performance out of it, I would not say it was "Bad Hardware" as we saw during the later part of that hardware cycle impressive graphical accomplishments by multiple developers.  The thing is the 360 gained a lot of ground on Sony during that era because MS had a year head start and developers in the beginning of the cycle were having issues coding to the PS3.  I believe one of the biggest selling point for a console is what your friends are playing on.  With the year headstart and Sony struggle, a lot of 360 consoles were in people hands which made MS very competitive even still Sony was able to maintain their marketshare advantage.

Even with that example, it was the hardware that was holding back a lot of games which allowed MS to make much gains against Sony before developers turned the corner.  The same was for the Xbox one.  Weak hardware caused developers to struggle to get decent performance out of the hardware and the hardware was more expensive then MS main competitor.  Its one thing to over come having weaker hardware and still go up against the market leader.  Its another to have weaker hardware and cost more than the market leader and have any real success.

Do not get me wrong, Sony played a masterclass game in the PS4.  They took full advantage of MS misstep and their studios were able to perform with high quality AAA content.  When you look at the total picture, all games played better on the PS4.  3rd Party content, first party content and at a cheaper price.  While having the most powerful hardware does not ensure you a win, having a very weak hardware at a higher price definitely ensure you a big loss.