This really isn't anything new.
Sony has NEVER been an innovator or a leader in the console space. They are really good at marketing and making their stuff look cool. But they've never been the ones pushing boundaries. Or making new concepts work. Their first controller was a glorified snes pad and clearly was made by people with no idea how 3d games were going to control. Nintendo introduced the analog stick, the concept of dual directional inputs (technically they did this with the dual d pads on the virtual boy, but the n64 pad was designed that people could use the dpad to move and the analog to aim if they wanted.) and expandable controllers.
Microsoft pushed essentially all of the innovation in the online space (after sega got the ball running and proved it could work, of course), and were responsible for the HDD and the push to consoles to act as media centers.
Sony beat everyone to the punch with PS Now....and promptly sat on it for near a decade while Microsoft, with a much smaller catalog of games, made gamepass a smash success right under their noses. And now the new features of ps now are to bring it in line with what gamepass has been doing since jump. Sony flirted with modding on consoles and cross play/cross buy. Microsoft made them happen. And when sony was approached about them, fought tooth and nail to prevent having to play with everyone else. (and I would argue that the only reason they are formally allowing cross play now is because they launch a new console in under a year, and do not want to be seen as anti consumer when people have a choice about platforms.
Hell, even when it comes to console engineering (which used to be a high point for them) they are lagging behind. Microsoft has gone from a giant console, to the weird almost suicidal mess of power bricks and faulty components that was the 360, to the X1, to the xbox one x, which is not only more powerful than the pspro, but manages to be substantially smaller, cooler and nearly silent because microsoft used a new cooling tech that consoles haven't used before.
It hasn't hurt them before, I doubt it will hurt them now.
What MIGHT hurt them is that both Microsoft and Nintendo appear to have hit on strategies that play well to their own strengths, and mitigate what have been their historical weaknesses. The ps1 launched against 2 consoles that were hard to develop for, and that had alienated 3rd parties. That's an easy win. The ps2 had momentum and the competition was either imploding financially, reeling from an unprecedented defeat but unwilling to make the changes necessary to prevent another, or just entering into the console business. The ps4 had an underpowered competitor that was DOA the second it launched, and their main competition was helmed by a guy who was only there to leverage his position into a better paying job at Zynga, which he would then run into the ground.
The only time sony has faced 2 confident, prepared, and popular (or at least not UNPOPULAR) opponents was last gen, and they spent much of it getting their asses kicked. It remains to be seen what will happen if sony can't rope-a-dope their opponents again.
www.gamesindustry.biz
