Long rambling post, apologies.
Summary
Sony is in a very interesting position right now with Playstation. The gaming and network section of the company makes up about 40% of the company-wide sales, and almost half of income, but was down significantly in both hardware and software sales for the last year (ending in March). The company also saw a significant decrease in the entertainment business containing movies and music, which probably will continue to see losses this year with the problems of trying to launch movies with audiences either unable or unlikely to visit theaters in the near future. The smallest segment, about 20% of sales, which includes insurance and financial services, actually earned almost as much income as gaming.
Sony needs Playstation to be successful, needs to sell lots of hardware and software in the next year (and thereafter) which explains the focus on separation of generations, and probably the incompatibility of the PS5 controllers (as somewhat alluded to by Albert Panello).
In some ways, Sony has been using gaming as a way to support the rest of the company for the last while, which puts them in a very different position from Microsoft and the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. Sony almost seems to be approaching gaming as if it’s still the same business it has been, but all the others are coming at it with the view of it being a huge growth opportunity.
While Xbox is a mature company, it is coming to this generation with the idea of disruption, attempting to split the idea of a gaming console into the gaming platform it has been developing over the last few years, with the concept of playing games on whatever device is best for your circumstances. For some, that’s a premium console. Some may choose to go with a console that fits their existing setup at a lower cost, some play on PC, and many may choose to stream on phones or tablets to not have to buy a console.
Google has stated the goal of trying to get games to launch directly from YouTube via Stadia, though at the moment people seem to be resisting the business model o having to buy the game in addition to streaming it. This could change in time, or Google may be willing to try other options to see the platform succeed. I think that this platform depends on Google being able to get it to the scale they want, so they can use it either as an extension of serving ads or collecting user data to better target advertising. They are also device agnostic, in that you don’t have to buy a console in order to connect to their platform, which gives them a low barrier to entry.
Amazon hasn’t shown their full hand yet so far as I’m aware. I played a small section of their first game, based on The Grand Tour, and found it to not be particularly fun despite loving the source material. I believe their second game was out for a month or so before going back to beta, and the next delayed. I’m not sure though if they’re trying to launch as part of Twitch / prime gaming or content to make games for other platforms for now. They do have the ability to add their games to Kindle Fire devices and a web player if that’s their goal, and the success of Twitch gives them an easy place to launch games if they do find something that people want.
Apple is one of the most successful in gaming currently, thanks to the 30% cut on all games on their platform, and are looking for success in the Apple Arcade. Its hard at the moment to see them going for core gamers, since they have easy access to the large casual market and a large user base. I’m very interested in what happens with all of the recent focus on their policies, with Microsoft, Facebook and Epic all drawing attention to them in the last couple weeks.
While I think the PS5 will probably sell fairly well for the first couple of years, I think the generational success for Sony really will come down to how much success the newcomers find, how successful “Xbox as a service” is for Microsoft, and how willing Sony is to be flexible. There are some good signs here, with them exploring launching games on PC, with MLB launching on rival platforms in the future (I’m curious if MLB required this as a condition of renewing the license, or if the cost required selling more copies in order to make financial sense for Sony, or if it was something else).
Not sure if I really had a point here, but I think this generation will be fascinating. (also, I haven’t forgotten Nintendo, just who can really say what they’ll do? 
) I also think the concept of a generation may be lost with the ability to to just continually update server side hardware over time, it will allow more of a morphing into new experiences over time with revisions of hardware to offer new features, not hard cutoffs. In that, I really admire Xbox for recognizing that people want to be able to play whatever they like with whatever they have. There likely will be new Xbox devices that offer new features, but I wonder if the name would change in the way they have between previous generations.
