Have to put on Xbox Live. I play a bit though. ;) 

Its called competition.  Its what gamers want because they get the best of both worlds as 2 huge corporations either match features or try to outdue the other.  Its what every gamer wants to happen and what every fanboy hates.  I believe as gamers we should hope that competition stays strong between both consoles so that each maker will strive to provide the best experience for little in cost.

MS did not try to wipe out the Blu-Ray format.  If they wanted to do that they would have included the HDD Dive within the 360 instead of as a add on.  Do not forget that the reason the PS3 did not release the same time as the 360 was due to Blu-Ray not being ready.  Sony had to wait a whole year before the format was done.  HDD was avaliable when MS released the 360 and MS provided support for the device on their console because it allowed the 360 to display HD movies.  It would have been silly for MS to wait another year to release the 360 just to inlcude a very expensive Blu-ray drive that would have upped the cost of the 360 and put it at a disadvantage against the PS3.

Look it up, they wanted to help HD-DVD win the format war against Blu Ray Solely because it was Sony's. In the end the fate of HD-DVD didn't mean shit to MS and when you start to read the articles from back when they created the add on it was only just to fight off Sony just because. Its just how MS is.

They didn't want either format to win, they wanted to prolong the war and prevent anybody becoming dominant until digital distribution was viable. To a certain extent they succeeded.

If they wanted both to die they wouldn't have picked a side. Sure, they want digital to win over and I agree about that, but they did want to take out Blu Ray. MS talked about not wanting Blu Ray and talked so much crap and now look at them. They have it after they lost the format war. They cant stay behind with what the market wants. Same reason why Xbox Live is pretty much PSN+ now.

I do not have to look it up, I experienced the who damn generation including reading coutless articles on the subject.  As stated if MS wanted to help HDD Win the war they would have included the drive in the 360.  If MS wanted to help HDD win the war you would be able to play games from the HDD.  In other words, the only thing MS wanted from HDD was HD movies and thats it.  MS was already building Silverlight to do HD streaming like it does today and they were not going to commit to HDD within the 360 since it would drive up the cost of the console.  

People keep forgetting that Sony was only one of many hardware and software companies in the Blu-ray consortuim.  Hell, there were quite a number of Blu-ray disk that used MS video codex which means MS was making money on each Blu-ray disk sold.  I know for you MS is always trying to keep Sony down but in reality, its probably no where close to what you think.  Instead it was all about money.  Money changing hands and alliances formed based on that money.  MS backed HDD because it was cheaper.  Here is an article that talks about the war on the business term

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/carroll/microsoft-and-the-hd-dvd-format-wars/1494

What exactly did they try?

On Xbone there is no positives allowed, simple as that. If nobody comes, there is always STAGE, the positive Xbone thread saviour.

Alot of these features are really wanted (according to the feedback page they are near the top of their respective categories) im glad about 3D support.