Does Sony have a massive loyal fanbase bigger than Nintendo, though? How many Sony 1P games are selling and generating revenue at the rate of TOTK, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Pokemon etc? How many have consistently done this for the past 10+ years?
Obviously Sony have huge games like Spiderman and GOW, and decent-selling games like HFW and GT7, but what beyond that? Better yet, what are the profit margins on a lot of these? I'm willing to bet Nintendo's got much bigger profit margins on TOTK selling 10 million units, than Sony got from TLOU2 selling 10 million units, as just an example.
Look I'm not saying this to be doom & gloomer or anything, it's just an observation of the reality. I think if Sony's core buying base were as loyal as you say, their profits from gaming would be higher than they are, given the huge lead in revenue they have over Nintendo. I'd also argue, that Sony wouldn't have needed to feel they need to port the marquee games to PC, as well. Yet Nintendo's gaming profits are 2x that of Sony's. Granted, Nintendo doesn't have many other divisions outside of just gaming, but I'm not talking about the movie, music, finance etc. sides of Sony here.
I agree with you in the Nintendo analogy insofar as, Sony have to double down on what they're really good at, what gives them a unique identity in the market. But in Sony's case, IMO, that is going to be a bit more difficult. Most of their biggest 1P IPs are story-heavy games so they have built-in shelf lives simply due to that reason. One of Sony's biggest strengths is their ability to work with and empower 3P devs and pubs...how do they continue to do that when direct competitors are actively targeting Sony's closest 3P partners, without Sony making some acquisitions and big investments into 3P of their own?
I'd also argue one of Sony's other strengths was having a nice variety of 1P content. I'd say 2009-2013 PS3 was the peak from them in terms of that balance, between big heavy-hitting 1P AAA blockbusters, great MP FPS shooters & action games, more niche/artsy high-production AA efforts, and smaller AA games in a variety of genres. They have significantly scaled back on everything but the 1P AAA blockbusters over the past 10 years, and now when stuff like MS buying ABK happens, we see what that results in. What feels like a scramble of sorts, which could have possibly been avoided.
And at least going from the last fiscal plans, instead of shifting back to that variety in PS3 gen, they're keeping growth in 1P traditional games relatively stagnant, while pumping tons of funds into live-service GaaS content that they've even said, expect most of it to fail just to find one or two surefire hits. I'll be honest, that is not a strategy that I put a lot of confidence in.
So I have to respectfully disagree with you on the idea that Sony "just" need to focus on their own 1P content, because I think they need to seriously reevaluate some of those plans for 1P content, if they haven't done so by now. Square-Enix could be next for Microsoft or some other big company to buy? Well if Sony lets that happen, they deserve whatever further erosion of market strength comes with it. They should know what they need to do to secure the future prosperity of their gaming platform. They've seen the same documents we have, heck they saw them earlier than us, and more of them.
For now I'm going to give benefit of the doubt, and guess that they (Sony) are in fact making some redirected moves to things they genuinely need to, in order to secure their place in gaming. I've already said what those moves would look like from my POV: acquire a couple of publishers (at least one Japanese one (likely Square-Enix), if not two), acquire a few more smaller 3P devs for 1P content diversification (maybe studios like Vanillaware, Arc System Works, Ember Lab etc.), and purchase big shares in most of the big and mid-sized 3P publishers (EA, Take-Two, CDPR, Bandai-Namco, Capcom (if not acquired), Kadokawa (well, even more), Epic (same), Koei-Tecmo, Konami, Ubisoft etc.) and do some sizable investment partnerships with some of them as well.
That, in addition to a more sensible live-service GaaS approach, scaling back PC ports of non live-service games to larger gaps (or just not doing those ports at all), investing more into traditional AAA and AA content while leveraging legacy IP, is the general strategy I think Sony have to do now. It's not really an option to not pursue, anymore. They can't just 100% copy Nintendo's strategy and expect the same results, they'd of needed 20+ years having done that (with different choices along the way WRT IP retention choices of select franchises) to make that an option.
