Perhaps you could start before you went on? Of those things I would say exactly none of them are MS following Sony's lead. I mean some of those points are just weird. Copied Sony's 10 year plan........ wha? You mean a company wanted a product that requires a high investment and complimentary purchases wanted it to have a long lifespan?! Not exactly Sony's thing there. Followed Sony's lead with dvds.... you mean Microsoft used the cheapest and most sensible disc based option? What was the alternative? Invest money into a unique format like the Gamecube's mini-discs? The other points I don't even understand, I literally have no idea what point 6 is meant to say.... they have games?

So far I think you have done a good job of proving: If you cherry pick you can prove anything! I mean your point is basically that if you take away one of THE BIGGEST areas for this generation of gaming, where MS lead the way and Sony followed, then MS always copy Sony. I think most people would agree that this generation is effectively the online generation. Sony most definitely copied a HUGE amount of things from MS in that regard. 

The weird thing is you even said in your original post that Sony follows Nintendo. Then decided that MS follows Sony.... why? Surely they would be following Nintendo. 

I mean if we wanted to use your logic we could actually say Sony follow MS. Nearly entire online infrastructure, focus on bringing out the most powerful console etc. 

Pointless guys. Everyone follows everyone, both ways, even Nintendo. Some just follow more than others at different times, but it's all shared anyways, we can find all kinds of examples of taking inspiration one of the other in all directions. The question is which do you want to focus on? If it's MS to Sony since MS entered the market, then there you have it. If you want to go Sony to MS since MS entered the market, you get another list.

It's all good guys, what exactly is trying to be proven? :P

if Xbox uses blu-ray wouldn't they have to pay a royalty to Sony

Online performance is not Microsoft's only strength, and in fact, Microsoft are the ones who made it a must-have for consoles. That's one huge thing in favor of Microsoft and wanting to remove it is simply for the sake of cherry picking.

1. No, they wanted to be more visible for consumers, rather than just being for enterprise customers. VG247 ran a few pieces on how the Xbox came to be last year, you should read them.

2. Yes, clearly wanting your device on the market for as long as possible and making as much money from it as possible is something only Sony wants.

3. Huh? The 360? The 360 Slim? Which one are you referring to?

I don't see any 360 model that looks like this:

 or this for that matter: 

 I honestly don't see how Microsoft copied the PS2 with any of those designs...

4. DVD was the most sensible format at the time, which is why they chose it. I won't talk about HDDVD, as I have no idea what reasoning Microsoft had behind it, but the fact that Sony has had to allow installs to the harddrives of the PS3 tells you that bluray wasn't quite ready for primetime.

5. It's called being first to market, and like with #2, it's not something Sony started doing.

6. Seeing as how development costs started to skyrocket with this generation, wouldn't it be likely that developers also wanted to have their games on the 360? Especially seeing as how Microsoft went out of their way to make piece of hardware that was easy to develop for.

I'm not saying Microsoft hasn't learned lessons from what Sony has been doing, but it all comes back to the sentence "Microsoft always ends up following Sony's lead" still being blatantly wrong. You won't accept online gaming as an area where Microsoft are leading, and you think Microsoft is following Sony in everything they do, which is clearly wrong.

@ happydolphin

It's a matter of principle, as S.T.A.G.E. is clearly trying to make Sony look superior to Microsoft by spreading misinformation.

In an extremely roundabout way yes. Sony is part of the founding members of blu-ray. However they were also a founding member of DVD. There were in fact far fewer companies that created DVD than were involved with Blu-ray. There were 4 founding members of DVD and 9 for blu-ray. 

So it depends on how the licensing works and what split the company makes from it. If the companies each get an exactly equal split of the money (which is unlikely) then it would have to cost just over twice as much to use blu-ray than dvd for Sony to make the same amount from each Xbox 720 sold as each xbox 360.

So yea long story short. MS already pays the DVD founding members for 360, it will then pay the blu-ray founding members for 720. Sony is a member of both of these groups.

I know you understand what I was trying to say, but fair enough, and nice post.

They'd pay the BR consortium which includes Sony - but so what?  No different from Sony paying MS to put Windows on their laptops.  MS didn't put BR in 360 because they didn't want to pay - the added an HDD Drive they needed to pay a loyalty for - nor because they don't want to pay Sony - MS I'm sure is happy to pay Sony in principle since it gives Sony money to pay right back to MS for Windows.

MS didn't put BR in 360 because they wanted to go with DVD and keep the costs down and because they hoped - maybe still do - that their next console could be digital.  MS backed HDD simply to delay a winner and hurt PS3.  They didn't want HDD to win any more than BR and knew that although BR looked likely to win if they backed HDD with an add-on it might delay the result.

If they believe they don't need BR they will go digitial - but I think they will decide that the recession, amongst other factors, will have delayed the time they can go fully digital.  DVD I believe they will decide is too small this time due to rising game sizes - particularly if the console is more powerful the games are sure to get bigger.

They could go proprietaty - that's what Nintendo do - but that normally means no playback of other mediums - i.e. no DVD or BR playback, which doesn't fit MS's push for entertainment hub.

So I expect they'll either go digital (which I think would be a mistake) or push for digital but stick a BR in it as well.

MS keeps on stealing PS3 exclusives it seems

I mostly agree except some parts which seem a tiny bit far-fetched like MS not wanting HDD to win more than BR. But I mostly agree. I'd add that I expect MS to launch two versions of the console. One digital only (like psp go), and one with BR. Either this gen (at launch or within the gen with remodels) or the next.

Can someone explains this line of thinking to me? MS hasn't taken any Sony IPs. If this referencing third party titles, which I'm sure it is, then it's not true. Third party titles are the property of their publisher, not Sony.