Considering where PS2 and Xbox were when the 360/PS3 gen started by the end Xbox 360 was the clear winner of that gen taking millions of Sony's customer base (albeit for lots of them to return due to the Xbox one then Series missteps which were frustratingly self inflicted)

I missed the part about competition remaining the same initially so with that in mind I don't think they could've won any since they obviously couldn't have won gen 6, 8 or 9 and the PS3 post Slim was strong enough that beating the Wii was a really big ask even if there was no RRoD. Now if they didn't badly screw up with the Xbox One and instead invested heavily into first party studios and went hard on the acquisitions sooner then there's a world where they could've won a future generation if they abandoned business sense and made everything exclusive, including no longer releasing on PC since Sony would've had no shot at being able to compete long term with Microsoft throwing their full weight behind Xbox. This would also require Nintendo faltering though since the Switch brand is currently too strong for even this supercharged hypothetical Xbox brand to beat.

Yes, Microsoft had everything they needed to succeed, and they did exceptionally well in their first two generations. The fact that they stumbled so hard after 360 and never recovered is the bizarre part.

The only one they really had a shot with was 360. Maybe if they had launched Kinect earlier (say 2007) to cash in on the casual motion gaming fad earlier they maybe could have stolen some more sales from the Wii.

Kinect would never have been made without the motion control explosion happening first, and as something like that takes considerable time to develop, there was really no way for them to have it out back in 2007.

No, is my vote. MS simply doesn't have enough exclusives and certainly the few they had were limited in variety. MS was never Sony, much less Nintendo.

I would argue that in the 360 gen had quite a variety of console exclusives; there was the usual Halo/Gear/Forza, but also stuff like Lost Odyssey, Alan Wake, Fable 2/3, Dead or Alive 4, Condemned, Shadow Complex, Ace Combat 6, even Bioshock and Mass Effect initially, though those went multiplat later.

I'd agree completely as far as Xbox One and Series go, though.