First of, welcome and be careful navigating these choppy waters.
If I understood your post correctly, your balanced statement hints at xbone's overall market strategy and not necessarily the hardware power difference between the two. I believe at this point having heard from developers and people such as yourself it's pretty clear that the ps4 is easily a more powerful gaming platform.
Now let's address the tv strategy:
It's pretty clear that the xbooe is designed primarily for the US consumer. After all, the tv integration features as limited as they are will only function in the US and japan during launch. Being a home theater enthusiast myself, I find that one HDMI input can hardly qualify a box as a media hub device. The lack of a built in DVR is also another weak point of the xbone. Based on the demos by Microsoft, the xbone is something to enhance your live tv viewing experience. Furthermore, all the apps are stowed behind a paywall. There are a lot people that do not subscribe to XBL, so these "benefits" will not apply to them.
My Apple TV and Panasonic plasma cover every video service and app I ever need. Also the Apple TV seems to be adding more apps lately and if apple open that platform to developers, it will blow everything else in that space out of the water.
NFL partnership:
Let's start of by saying that outside of the US no one gives a flying fuck about the nfl. But in the US, football is king. So let's look at what we get with the xbone.
Access to red zone app. That's great but it requires a cable subscription so it's redundant and therefore not a selling point for most people.
Fantasy tracking. One problem, everyone I know uses yahoo for their fantasy football/basketball needs. No one cares for nfl.com's version and that's the only one supported.
The only useful thing from the partnership is that xbone will be advertised as the official nfl console, and to a lot of uninformed consumers that so sounds fantastic.
Kinnect:
This is the only feature that I believe may have some potential but is in danger. Kinnect looks cool, but I wonder outside of basic UI navigation how much action it will see from the average consumer. Remember we are talking about the average consumer now and not us geeks on GAF. I bet most people will not go beyond the most basic commands like "Xbox on". Xbone can't afford to be $100 more and still be the weaker system, either Microsoft takes a massive loss and drops the price or drops the kinnect. I bet they'll make a kinnect less sku eventually which would cut the legs out of the kinnect. Making it no longer a mandatory device will also hurt its adoption.
I think I wouldn't be out of line to say that kinnect games are a gimmick until proven otherwise. No one cares for kinnect games and Microsoft faces an uphill battle to make it relevant.
Sony announced face and voice recognition for the PS4, and while I don't claim the ps4 camera being nearly as capable as kinnect, for most looking for these types features it will be good enough. Ps4 will recognize a persons face and respond to verbal commands for navigating the PS4 interface. I believe 80%+ of the consumers will find this more than adequate.
What do you guys think? I am simplifying this too much?
Because based on talking to people around me, who I think are pretty typical consumers I can't come to any other reasonable conclusion.
