PlayStation: Steamed Sony

Sony announced that their quarterly numbers were boosted by PlayStation.

Not 1st party software sales, obviously.

Not hardware sales.

3rd party software sales are what is bailing them out. 

They are living on the graces of the 30% sales fee for all 3rd party content on PSN. 

PSN needs PS4 or PS5 to funnel customers into the online marketplace. 

What happens when the next Nintendo console comes out?

A majority of players use their PS4 to play Fortnite.

What happens when that last bastion of Gen Z kids out-grow Fortnite? Statistically, games like Fortnite grow for the first 10 years then enter a decline. World of Warcraft peaked within 8 years. Call Of Duty peaked 10 years after the release of World At War, the game that started the modern CoD formula. It is undoubted that GTA6 will underperform, strictly because there aren't even enough units of hardware capable of playing 205,000,000 copies of GTA6. 

Sony has allowed PlayStation to rest most of their business model on PSN sales. They hope to reproduce the success of Valve's Steam. Yet, by forcing Steam customers to make PSN accounts, PlayStation is sending a strong signal that they cannot beat Valve through hardware attachment. 

What value does PlayStation have without strong hardware, strong first-party software, and a half-cooked Steam?