Tencent is the one that generates the most for gaming industry, and they don't own a console.
Yes, Tencent is the one that generates the biggest amount of money but as you say they don't own a console. In gaming their main business is mobile. It's a very different case from Sony, where their main gaming business is console, like MS or Nintendo.
Sony benefited from the lackluster of the xbox one. And wii u Nintendo to clench the market leader.
This gen is quite different. Switch kicked Playstation out of Japanese market. They sold 92m switch in just 4.5 years. They are closing down on the ps4 numbers.
Well, Sony outsold MS all the generations, and same with Nintendo -in home consoles- with the exception of Wii (partly due to the own Sony issues with PS3) and seems that now will happen with Switch.
Switch seems to be on track to end very likely outselling PS4, I think it will depend on when do Nintendo release its successor and how fast do they discontinue Switch after it. Looking at previous generations, typically Sony supported their consoles at least 3 or 4 years after their successor gets released, while MS or Nintendo typically killed their consoles way faster once the successor gets released.
MS bought entire zenimax. That means no doom, skyrim, or any zenimax games on Playstation. They also doing day1 games, which is stealing customers from Sony.
Zenimax game units sold didn't achieve a 3%, maybe not even a 2% of the total PS4 games sold. Sony will simply assign the money for exclusives, money for marketing deals and PSN featurings to other publisher, and will compensate it with this, and also with the growth Sony is experiencing these years both in consoles sold, games sold and subscriptions.
They are growing, their userbase wasn't affected by the Zenimax aquisition. They are instead growing and breaking gaming history records these years, which could be even higher if not limited by the chips shortages.
Whatever Sony had in the past doesn't matter now.
Obviously matters. They have a huge userbase, catalog and amount of top partners because of they did and had in the past, and because they do today is to continue the path set in the past. Their strategy isn't new, they are continuing what they did in the past and iterate on it with some tweaks and additions.
All that matter is keeping those 120m ps4 users from Xbox and switch. If Sony isn't careful, and keep letting these 2 do whatever they want, they will lose tons of the market share.
At its launch aligned point of its lifetime, PS4 is pretty close of the top selling console ever, the PS2 in terms of consoles sold. PS4 has the gaming history record -by far- of amount of games sold for a console, and they also have the biggest userbase in game subscriptions and PS5 that is also breaking gaming history records (would smash them if it wasn't due to chip shortages limitations) and according to Sony the PS5 users are more engaged than the PS4 ones.
Sony has been growing these years and everything seems on track to continue growing: once they get rid of chips shortages will destroy all records of console sold. Their 1st/2nd party games are selling better than they ever did, and they are growing all their teams and making acquisitions to make more and better games. They seem to be working on expanding and improving their game subscriptions -so pretty likely they will increase the lead they have here vs MS and Nintendo- and soon will release PSVR2. They also started to port old games to PC, which are selling a lot. And they will start this month to release movies and tv shows of their IPs, meaning they will earn even more money and will grow even more.
Meanwhile, they seem outselling Xbox by a 2:1 aprox., and Switch already passed the yearly sales peak of its lifetime sales curve. Which means that in the following years the amount of Switch consoles sold per year will keep decreasing. So in line with Sony estimates, seems that Sony's market share will increase in the following years, instead of decreasing.
Xbox was facing the ps2. Then x360 happened. MS is seeing that jump now. That is how unpredictable the market is now. That is the reality.
The 360 got benefited because PS3 had many important mistakes, like releasing it almost two years later, being super expensive and bizarre to develop for etc. So it did help 360 early sales, even if launch aligned PS3 did beat 360 and ended outselling it because of having a longer lifecycle. On top of that, 360 got benefited that since every generation the costs of AAA rise, it reached a point where many 3rd party ones needed to go multi to have more revenue. And since many 3rd party exclusives were before that in the PS side, Xbox got many of them, helping them grow.
Nowadays most 3rd party AAA games are multi unless moneyhatted, and there are way more top studios so if some fail can be replaced, so there won't be surprises on this side. And Sony learnt from their mistakes with PS3 and didn't repeat them with PS4 and PS5.
So looking at the past, to their current strategy and their current numbers and stuff in the works yes, the market is predictable: MS will grow but Sony will grow (mostly on gamepass), so Sony will increase their market share lead (specifically in consoles sold, game subscriptions, amount of games sold for heir consoles, units sold by their 1st+2nd parties, game subscriptions, VR, revenue and profits of their gaming division).
I always say this. Sony needs to diversify their games. They need to do other genre. Shooter games, rpg games, mp games.
Sony's catalog is way more diversified than any other publisher.
Sony already publishes a lot of genres and releases a lot of new IP and weird, creative games. Hermen -the guy in charge of their games- said they wil continue doing so, and that around of the over two dozen games they have under development are new IPs, and that they will continue betting on both big and small games, sequels and new IPs, SP and MP games, more traditional and more creative games, etc.
Regarding MP he said they will bet harder on them. In addition to GT7 of the TLOU2 MP game they also have MP games in the works at least at Guerrilla, Firesprite, London, Bend, Firewalk, Deviation and Haven. Plus pretty likely Helldivers 2. Regarding shooters, not sure if the Guerrilla MP game is a shooter, but Firewalk and Deviation are the guys behind the Destiny or CoD BO games.
Regarding RPG games, they already have a shit ton of 3rd party exclusive top rpg games, and they also have the multiplatform ones, selling more in their console than in other platforms. Don't need to make their own ones.
More or less regarding shooters: this time aren't exclusives but basically all the top ones (Fortnite, CoD, Battlefield, Apex...) have PS as their top platform. So even if they are working on shooters, no need to cover themselves this genre because already have it covered with many top shooters.
Why? You think PC gamers will buy a PS4 or PS5 to play the sequel? Because that's not how things work.
Sony expects that some of them will, but the majority won't. And this is one of the reasons of why they make these ports, because many PC gamers (specially in certain countries they want to reach) never will buy a console, or specifically their console.