At the start of the 8th gen, a lot of what Microsoft went for was too soon, people weren't ready to change yet.
So Sony had that gen all to themselves.
Selling boxes that you put a Blu-ray into to play a game.
Quite a lot of those features were dropped by Xbox and the slowly reintroduced over the 8th gen.

Now, come the 9th gen, Sony is still selling a box that you put Blu-rays into to play games.

But now, rather than looking focused and lean, they're looking old fashioned, out of touch.

Xbox has seized control of the power narrative, the market narrative and the platform narrative.

Now Sony is playing catch up and, looking back at the 8th gen, it took Microsoft 4 years, at the very least, to get back up and in the ring.

And it wasn't just time necessary, Xbox had the entire force of Microsoft behind them to write the software and provide services like Azure. Sony doesn't have that, they are a consumer electronics company.