@jhcho2:
Console sales are more correlated with product perception than with the actual capacity of the hardware. History has proven this, so I disagree with you. There's no way to prove this, but I'm convinced that even if the PS4 had the same, or slightly less power than the X1, the PS4 would still be winning this gen sales.
In my opinion, with such mediocre games as in 2014, and with the console at release price, (Oh, the Supercharged PC <3) powerful hardware alone is far from justifying their insane numbers. So, ye, the initial bump was given by Microsoft, but Sony was, and still is, wise enough to cherish the opportunity and build upon it. Their whole strategy is based on selling the idea that the PS4 is more player friendly than any other platform, that they are the last good guys standing for the players, and that message landed pretty well with the masses, even if there's little that separates them from the competitors. That's why they can get away with what happened on the last E3 and, from what others might have to deal with some backlash, they actually managed to make an historical E3 moment with the announcement of two 3rd party/multiplataform games, one a remake (we know now, episodic), other a kickstarter (with goals clearly bellow the real values needed). Microsoft is the villain, they even steal (temporarily) Tomb Raider from the players, Sony is cool, because without them there would be no new Street Fighter (if anyone believes that a brand like SF needs to team up with anyone to sell...Jebus!).
Sony has all the merit for their success. But I think that the reasons for their success are not so linear as just having more powerful hardware.
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