Console transitions are incredibly tricky. One of the advantages Sony have over Microsoft and to a lesser extent Nintendo is the truly world wide presence they built up during the PS1 and PS2 eras which helped cushion the blow when the PS3 was such a disaster in the first two-three years. The original Xbox was basically a non-entity in non-English speaking markets so it was harder for them to capitalise when the PS3 stumbled out of the gate. Obviously the Xbox still took some market share, but I think if it was a more established brand in non-English speaking countries it could have been a lot worse for Sony than it ended up being. I think it's basically the difference between what the PS3 ended up doing (what was it in the end, 85 million-ish or so?) and what the Xbox One is going to do (probably top out at 50 million). Because even though it looks like the Xbox One is having a similar second half renaissance like the PS3, it's still mainly concentrated in the English speaking world. But when you look the whole Xbox One unveiling, it was so US focused with the whole cable integration and being able to watch NFL, etc. Heck I even forgot about the 'Tier One/Tier Two' country debacle. What terrible messaging.
Nintendo has gotten better on that front now and I think it's paying off dividends now with the Switch which is seeing a lot of success in France, Spain, Germany, etc, etc. The next step for them is more of a prescence in the MEA part of EMEA.
But back to console transitions - I do think the age of GaaS and online subscriptions should theoretically make it easier. Even that I think helped cushion the blow for the Xbox One because a lot of people were invested in the Xbox Live ecosystem, and you can see them leveraging that with the backwards compatibility , Game Pass, etc.
