I would disagree - No one ever really assumed Sony would go out of business from a fundamental standpoint. They may have gone through a period of diminished value and failed projects (laptops, smartphones, etc.), but the PlayStation has always been a hit, the media arm has always been a 'Top 4' player, the headphones were always category-leading, the camera sensors were always top notch, and I'm sure I'm missing many other aspects of their business. If anything that brings to mind MSFT (who's always led in core areas, but has also had periods of diminished value and failed projects).

On the other hand, many people thought Nintendo (as we know it at least) might go belly-up in the Gamecube and Wii U eras. There was real talk of them becoming a game dev with no hardware if the Switch was as much of a failure [0]. Similar to the talk around Apple post-Newton, pre-iBook.

[0]https://www.gonintendo.com/stories/376204-after-the-failure-...