Gaming

Microsoft has yet to make a new generation of a console that did not widely and inevitably fail. At the beginning of the production run, 68% of the first XBox 360s were found to be defective. Another sixteen percent of those that reached the public failed with the end-user, which suggests that for the first year over two thirds of the 360s built were pieces of shit doomed to failure--and Microsoft made sure users paid for some of them, anyway.

Anectdotally, the problem was far, far larger, because the people who actually used the machines had them fail far more often (one of the problems had to do with the very inexpensive manufacturing process nVidia was using for the graphics chip, and the more it was used the more likely the piece was to crack). I know a pro gamer who cannot count the number of 360s he and his team broke--there was always one being sent back.

Microsoft "solved" the problem after a die-shrink, by removing the "red ring of death" from the box and using a different way to display a hardware failure (the die shrink did reduce heat problems and force nV to use a different manufacturing process, so the problem receded).

Even if you don't care that the XBox One is primarily an always-on market-research device designed to probe for the best way to suck money out of your wallet, if you're the first on your block to get one, you will also very likely be the first one to have to send your XBox One back to the manufacturer for repairs.

It's also worth pointing out that even though the XBox and PS4 hardware specs are pretty good today, both of them will be built on AMD hardware, and AMD is now perpetually less than 18 months from going out of business, being squeezed out by Intel on one side, nVidia on another, and ARM on a third. I wouldn't be surprised to learn they'll be losing money on every console component they make, too, and that in turn virtually guarantees that AMD will skimp on manufacturing quality exactly as nVidia did with the last ones. (Edit: technically, AMD doesn't even make hardware anymore, as their foundry was their only truly profitable business, so they naturally spun it off by itself.)

So the survival of either console depends largely on events that are mostly beyond the control of Sony and Microsoft, and both are relying upon the weakest player in the hardware business to deliver quality components, which is exceedingly unwise....

Final edit: One more thing: neither Sony nor Microsoft has any plans to allow gamers to use mouse-and-keyboard controls. Want to know why you console COD players can't play the PC COD players? Because research shows that console controllers cannot compete with mouse-and-keyboard setups, and even the best console players get cut down by eight-year-olds using an adult setup. The controller itself is a built-in handicap and both Sony and MS demand that you use it.