At that point, the tide was shifting in Sony’s favor. Fans and journalists alike mulled over what they’d just heard as Bungie showed footage from Destiny. But when the lights came back on, Sony’s knockout punch came with them. The system would be $399.

The ability to support used games and offline play would have been enough to give a distinct advantage to Sony, even if the prices were matched, but to have a full $100 difference between the two systems at launch? Sony didn’t just capitalize on Microsoft’s mistakes over the past few weeks. They picked up the ball Microsoft dropped, tossed it in the air, then smacked it out of the park. Then they turned and laughed in their faces, as seen in the video below, which already has 1.5M hits in the last twelve hours alone:

This is a combination of Microsoft creating a horrible mess for themselves, and Sony being smart enough to capitalize on the situation to the point where they outright embarrassed their rivals in front of millions. I’ve never seen anything like it at E3. Sony’s VP of Worldwide Studios spoke to Polygon about the feeling that accompanied these announcements, and the thought process leading up to them:

“It’s something that we believe in. We know gamers come first; we know what they want. I was personally overwhelmed with the massive explosion on Twitter, with everyone essentially begging, ‘Please don’t do this Sony, please don’t do this PlayStation!’ It was so hard not to say, right away, ‘Well, we never were going to do that, but now let’s have a little fun and announce it in a fun way at the PlayStation press conference.’

“I mean, that was such an amazing message,” Rohde said. “We kind of had a feeling; we kind of knew we were gonna land a little bit cheaper than those green guys. When it was verified this morning, we’ve just been walking around with smiles all day.”

Microsoft, as of now, is a bit harder to get a hold of, and is likely carefully crafting some sort of PR spin for all this. They have to get a handle on things, but it’s not just the press they have to contend with. Fans across every form of social media, even many self-proclaimed Xbox loyalists, are unanimously declaring Sony not only the winner of E3, but of the entire next console generation. Obviously, that’s going a bit far, but the messaging problem is more real now than ever. “RIP Xbox One, 2013-2013″ said one Reddit user, the sentiment posted on top of a picture of the console. This is a scary position for Microsoft to be in.

There are so many ways that Microsoft shot themselves in the foot here, it’s hard to even keep track of them all. First and foremost, the used game issue simply didn’t need to exist. Microsoft took far too long to convey the message that it was up to publishers to activate or deactivate used game sales, and by the time they did, people were already permanently upset with them. I completely empathize with their desire to push for digital distribution, but they got too far ahead of themselves. They could have set up an easy, convenient digital download network for new games that people could use if they so chose. But they also should have kept physical discs around for those who wanted them, and not used them as mere licenses to install content to a hard drive.

The same goes for the online check-in requirement. Microsoft was far too slow to clarify their position there, and though a once-a-day check-in is not “always on,” it’s not convenient either for those lacking internet, like soldiers deployed overseas. Is console piracy really so rampant that this system was necessary? I don’t believe so, and this was a fight that never should have been picked in the first place.

And then there’s the price, driven up to an uncomfortable level by the burden of the Kinect. Across both the Xbox One reveal and Microsoft’s E3 press conference, we’ve seen the new version of Kinect do only a few things, namely control menus and TV inputs with gestures and voice commands. The Kinect wasn’t even mentioned when it came to all of the games shown during yesterday’s conference. Microsoft is torn between wanting everyone to have a Kinect, but also realizing many of their fans hate hearing about it, which is why it was completely absent from the presentation yesterday. They can’t have it both ways, and its stuck them with a system that’s expensive because of a peripheral most of their fanbase didn’t want before, and certainly don’t want now as it’s been reclassified as some sort of Orwellian, always listening surveillance device. Even if it isn’t, again, it’s yet another Microsoft PR problem that spun out of control. It will be interesting to watch their stock prices this morning, and at the time of writing just after opening, MSFT is down 1.3% while SNE is up the same amount.

It would have been enough to let Microsoft dig its own grave, but Sony knocked them out with a shovel and started piling dirt on top of them for good measure. Metaphors aside, the Xbox One faces a very real challenge in trying to come up with selling points as to why it’s a more worthwhile purchase than the PS4.