This feeble competitor offers the cheapest console on the market, the most powerfull console, a lot of games for a very cheap price (gp), BC and very often 1$ deals (gold, pass, utimate, etc). It's 100% the merit of Sony's that they sell a ton of consoles instead of their competitor.
Not sure why you edited out the second part of my post praising Sony, but the "cheapest console on the market" and "most powerful console" are two separate products, the former being underpowered to the point that it was pretty clapped-out even at launch, and the latter being the most expensive console on the market. The other things you mention are desperation moves to compensate for the fact that MS haven't released a single game this generation as successful as Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Spiderman, etc.
Sony have done spectacularly well, they forfeited every penny of profit they ever made on the PS1 and 2 to salvage the PS3 after its bungled launch and then carried that good will through to the launch of the PS4, while MS released a (yes) feeble, Kinect and (at announcement) online DRM-infested console that they arrogantly assumed everyone who owned a 360 would buy just because.
To a lot of people, especially outside the US, the Xbox One may as well not exist, so Sony effectively had no direct console competitor this generation at all. That Sony didn't get complacent and still invested heavily in AAA first party blockbusters as well as supporting VR is absolutely to their credit, and they're deservedly reaping the rewards for it.
