I gotta say, I agree. I think it is a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The funny thing you mentioned about gamers being fickle, entirely true, they sort of won the battle of DRM with Xbox and PS. However, continuing with your smoke and mirrors idea, it's now the games that have went DRM insane, and likely with the help of MS/Xbox and PS brands. Both were going to have DRM locked systems that needed online access more or less 24/7 for use. The customers got pissed and made both do a 180 on that stance with their consoles. But now we have games like Destiny, Titanfall, probably the new AC Unity or whatever it's called, The Division is going to be the same as was just brought up in an interview that are all entirely online based and you can't play them without online access.
So did the consumers win the battle but loose the war? At this point, I'm going to say yes. Yes, because these games are the epitome of DRM just like the consoles were going to be, but it has made (up to this point) no difference in sales, and in fact two of the best selling games for both console support this online DRM model.
Does anybody else see an issue with this?
This is pretty much a rental of a game instead of buying it. Once these games lose their user base the servers are going to be lessened and eventually dropped entirely and you won't even be able to play the game anymore.
It rather pisses me off that these companies have done this so smoke and mirror show. All in the end to screw the consumer.
Alright, I'm done. Agree? Disagree? Why?

One Answer and I find it funny that Sony is clueless on it too. But if you look at the recent numbers of Sony as whole company, it is in 2 billion dollar debt, combined that with the massive over marketing campaign I would say this is the reason it has jumped out to early lead.
Think about logically the first massive over marketing I saw was the Super Bowl. I think about every third commercial break was the greatness awaits ad. Now from what I remember 4 years ago Ad space during a commercial 30 second spot was roughly 15 million dollars. You can do math from there.
Then being the solely Major Sponsor for the World Cup probably wasn't cheap either. I'm saying all this because Sony Market the hell out of it but can it hold momentum when games coming out start getting bad critic scores, and cutting back the advertising..

There are only 2 reasons why the PS4 is selling so well compared to the X1:

1: The negative PR for M$ and the positive PR from Sony from the pre-E3 reveals to the lead up to the launch.
2: The initial $100 price difference between the X1 and PS4.

Take these two things away and the X1 and PS4 are on equal footing. They are literally two sides of the same coin when it comes to features and software library. Arguing that PS4 is selling better because it is technically more powerful or that 3rd party games perform better on PS4 is a joke... PS3 was more powerful than 360, yet 360 trounced it for much of the generation, especially in North America. The original Xbox was more powerful than PS2 and multiplatform games looked and ran better on it, but that didn't stop the PS2 from running away as the market leader that gen.

In fact, the only real reason Sony has had so much success in the home console market, especially during the PS1, 2 and now 4 generations, is because its competition keeps shooting themselves in the foot... Nintendo and SEGA both did this during the PS1 & 2 era, and M$ and Nintendo did just that at the start of this generation.

Oh, and one more thing...

Sony fans 2013: "Screw you M$, we'll never give in to your always online DRM bullshit! We want to be able to play our games wherever and whenever we want, online or off!!!"

Sony fans 2014: "I can't wait to pick up my copy of Destiny!"

always online DRM for single player games is miles different then a multi-player game needing to be played online.   I mean cmon, thats Jega level logic

Not every aspect of the game is multiplayer... if you want to play some solo missions you still need to be online... and if the servers are down then you're just plain SOL.

I just think it's both hilarious and ironic that the PS4's biggest game of the year is an always-online title.

See the reason this assertion falls apart, shipment numbers can be lies as well. You have no basis to doubt their numbers other than your biases. 

people know what they are buying.  Its an MMO,  people understand if internet is down, an MMO wont work.    thats very different then using a DRM control system like what MS was going to put in place.  

Its just like how people understand the you cant play ff14 without the internet.   It has solo aspects aswell.    Just because Destiny allows you to play by yourself, it doesnt change the fact that its an MMO.  If your playing solo your still using a character that is kept on a server, collecting stats that need to update the online profile, going into worlds that have other people in them, and running into daily and weekly limits.

There is a huge difference between Bungie locking their game behind an always on connection and the console needing an always online connection to play games.

Not to mention your generalizations are wrong.