I'm a Sony boy. I love their IP's and their approach to general game design and letting their studios experiment. But Sony really has dropped the ball on a number of features(mainly hardware related) that Microsoft has just knocked out of the park.

1) The Elite controller. I wish Sony made something like this. Yes there are 3rd party controllers with similar features but they are not made by Sony and do not resemble the Dual Shock 4 which I prefer. I have the Nacon Pro and a Scuf Dual Shock 4 controller and I much prefer the Scuf because it is essentially a Dual Shock 4 with added buttons and longer sticks. Problem is I waited 4 weeks for that controller and paid alot for it. No local warranty either(I'm in Australia). An official Dual Shock 'Pro' controller would do away with all these problems.

I'll give you this one.

2) 4k Blu-Ray playback. MS implemented this in their base Xbox One S console which can often be had cheaper than a base PS4 console. Sony did not even implement this in their premium/4K focused Pro console which is sheer lunacy in my opinion. When I heard the Pro didn't include this feature, I decided against getting one. I would have bought a Sony UHD TV alongside it because my current TV's are only full HD(Sony Bravias).

Imagine that there are teams of people  who feed their families off thinking up this shit working at sony. They could have added a 4k player in the PS4. Or even the Pro. They didn't. And get this, they did that on purpose. The only reason they aren't coming out and saying why is because they own a movie studio and also release disc movies.

But 4k blu-ray movies... hell any disc based movie thing is going the way of the compact disc. Its obsolete tech simply because the majority of the world prefers to consume their content in another way. MS implemented that feature because more than anything else, they needed a marketing gimmick to differentiate themselves from the PS4. They got one, but its useless. Don't believe me? look at the sales of the ONe S the whole of this year. What good did having a 4k player do for it?

3) Supersampling enforced via hardware. With the Xbox One X, supersampling is available for every X enhanced game for 1080P tvs so you get a cleaner image with less aliasing. Where with Pro it is essentially upto the discretion of the developer.

I'll give you this one too. But this is also a very sony thing to do, they have this way of leaving these things up to the developers. They do at least have boost mode, but evn that was patched in after a while.

4) Xbox One X power. I initially stated that we wouldn't see many true native 4k games on the Scorpio and it would mainly be indies and AA titles but I was wrong. Rise of the Tomb Raider does run at native 4K on X while Wolfenstein runs near 2160P alot of the time. The 6TF VS 4.2TF difference is vast especially with the extra RAM and higher resolution textures. If I want the biggest jump in visuals from the base PS4, I will be getting the X.

If the PS4 released this year as opposed to last year, it would be in the same power ball park as the XB1X. Unfortunately though, it would have also cost $500. A $500 dollar console.... hasn't anyone learnt anything? The 1X will sell well this month and next.... but then watch those sales plummet next year. We are too far in the generation for better pixels to make any kinda impact. Sony knows it, MS knows it... and soon you will know it too.

5) X is smaller/runs quieter compared to Pro

You have its "more expensive" cooling solution to thank for that.  Here's is a question though. When you walk into a store around june next year and see the PS4pro for $300 and the XB1X for $500.... will you think it running quieter, being smaller and running its games at a higher rez (that unless you play games at 300% zoom you wouldn't notice) will make seem like a good deal?

6) Free-sync.

lol.....

I do think that when OLED TV's become cheaper in the next year, I will be getting the Xbox One X instead of a Pro. It just promotes 4k gaming and content(blu ray) more.

It is a Beast of a system!

Outside forums no one really cares about the hardware wars. Sure, there is some brand loyalty here and there. But the average consumer doesn’t keep up. We see examples of this each and every year when games like Call of Duty, Madden, and now Star Wars Battlefront fly off shelves regardless of the hate.

I am lucky enough to own a Pro, Switch, and XBox One X.

Some people say that $500 is too much to pay for a console. Not when you get what is packed in the XBox One X (you already hit on several points).

I think sales are going to surprise some people, but if they don’t I’m just glad I own one.

If you want to get a one X, then by all means do that. Doesn't mean that sony dropped the ball in all you talked about. 

The mainstream only cares about what's "cool". In the US, that has been NES, Genesis, PS1, PS2, Xbox 360, PS4 and now Switch. Brand loyalty is, like you said, for internet message boards. What wins a console war is getting the "cool" moniker and getting it early. In the US, if you get that, you win.