Time is not a answer since both Sega and Nintendo came out before Sony and never get there sales numbers Sony got on there first try .
There a lot of factors yes but time is not one of them .
Time is a factor; it's just not the only factor.
Sony wasn't some brand new company when they entered this market and either was Microsoft; the time the companies existed before and their branding / popularity effected their console businesses from the start.
Sony with decades of positive brand recognition from being a high-end electronics company.. MS with decades of negative brand recognition from blue screens of death and being known for anti-consumer / anti-competitive. MS of course did have recognition though..even despite their not-so-great reputation they were one of the most known companies in the world.
Sony still to this day GREATLY benefits from decades of positive image. You wouldn't know they were the creators of SecureROM, some of the worst DRM ever.. the creators of Blu-Ray.. which had DRM that was going to require you connect your BR player to the internet to watch movies (sound familar? lol).. the only 1st party console manufacturer participating in those awful "online pass DRM" things.. nobody has a memory or association with Sony for that stuff because of their positive image. They released the jokey video of their CEO lending someone a game and suddenly they were the heros of anti-DRM. (while quietly cancelling the online pass system.. the NEXT day lol)
Meanwhile MS proposed a DRM system everyone hated and then cancelled it within months before launch and still have the stench of that on their reputation.
Time definitely matters; the time you spend with a positive image gets burned into people's heads and the time you spend with a negative one does too.
Don't get me wrong Sony got their from having excellent products; but along the way ALWAYS did anti-consumer stuff. They just "won" a lot of the wars they fought, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's funny how consumers just have this super rosy picture of them as super consumer friendly.