Lets be honest, MS has been very different with Phil Spencer who got slated for saying he was enjoying playing Uncharted on his twitter and has come out and congratulated Sony's devs on their games. Its clear MS have their own agenda that is not purely locked to a console and whilst the media (and fanboys) will still argue about which is best, which has the most and/or best exclusives, which has the best sales, both Sony and MS have different paths. The main thing they have in common is that they both have hardware and studio's developing games.

Both companies have come up with great ideas, great features etc that have found their way onto their competitors too. However, Sony are reliant on their own hardware to sell their games but MS are not - not with their PC market dominance and streaming service that enables gamers to play anywhere on a mobile phone or tablet and that will be expanded to more OS's. Its more important for Sony to sell their hardware to sell their games but you don't 'need' an Xbox Console to play Xbox games.

The fact that both Sony and MS will have hardware that is 'relatively' comparable and give their owners access to the majority of the same games will put them into 'direct' competition in the eyes of the media but I expect that Sony and MS will have a healthy respect for each other internally. That too leads to a healthy competition which in turn benefits us as gamers. You may not like the fact that MS acquired a lot of new studios to 'compete' with Sony's output but as a gamer, that helps those companies - a lot that were struggling with the budgets of making quality games so could improve their titles. So you may need some device (other than a Sony console) to play them on but the end benefit is better games in the long run. If you really don't want an Xbox console, you can play them on PC or your phone...

Anyway, I am looking forward to the new hardware from both and the games too. As a gamer, the only thing that matters to me is the games, not the name on the box I play them on.