Sony has a real shot at leading this new video game consoles generation, if some basic assumptions hold and recently leaked(made public voluntarily?) information is correct.
The Playstation 3
I was extremely excited about the Cell processor when information about it came out, long before the PS3 shipped. I would look for new information/resources related to programming that beast, low-level architecture insights, anything really. I (still) think it's a really elegant processor (this won't be a technical post so I won't go there), but it was a departure from the norm for game developers; partitioning work into tasks, message queues, local-isolated memory with DMA based transfers between PUs(ok, it's a bit technical), and that's just some of the new paradigms developers had to become familiar with if they wanted to ship a game that was taking advantage of the system. To make things worse, the GPU of the PS3 is very weak, especially compared to the 360's, and if that wasn't enough for them poor developers and publishers, the PS3 was super expensive and the network experience was sub-par compared to what was available on the Xbox with their Live service. All in all, Sony didn't make it easy for developers, gamers or retailers. This of course made it possible for Microsoft to leap-frog past Sony's collective market share(PS2+PS3) - even though they had their own problems (red rings) - soon thereafter.
If the rumors are to be believed, the PS4 is more powerful than the Xbox720(or whatever they will call it), very easy to program (conventional architecture, no exotic systems on there) and, apparently, provides a more efficient pathway to bare-metal operations/programming which should provide an even better advantage to developers, in the long turn, for (presumably) the new Xbox games and services performance will be subject to more/thicker layers of indirection(drivers, APIs, etc).
The PSN outage
The PSN intrusion which led to some 80 million or so accounts being stolen in April 2011 was a huge blow to Sony. It took them a long, long time to figure things out(well over a month), cost them hundreds of millions of USD and ruined their relationships with their customers(not just gamers), partners and the media. Sony lost big, but I think it's gaining even more in the long run as a result of that incident and its long term consequences.
Sony rethought everything. They rebuilt parts of their infrastructure, hired many talented people to work on improving existing services, and what's even more important, all that probably led to a revision to their current PS4 plans, at least in terms of services, infrastructure, security and overall experience, that wouldn't have happened, I think, if Sony didn't have to face that huge issue, fix it and understand the cause and effects chain on there.
The New Sony
Under the leadership of Kaz Hirai, Sony is transforming itself and now stands a chance of regaining it's former glory; it's dropping unprofitable products and units, streamlining it's services and products, improving the experience. They really have no choice. Apple, Microsoft and the South Korean electronics giants (Samsung, LG) are beating them hard and they must hold their ground least they become irrelevant. I think they are doing a remarkable job at it, certainly compared to what old Sony was doing and the PS4 is crucial to their bounce-back efforts.
The Living Room
Everyone will tell you 2013 is the year of the living room. New video game consoles from Sony and Microsoft, new 'microconsoles' (Ooya, Gamestick, the Steambox) and more importantly, the Apple TV(set), and more systems we haven't heard of yet, are coming out soon. It's all about the TV and all things entertainment; video games, movies, music, everything. Sony has a good chance to be a key player in this new battlefront. They cannot afford not to be.
