For a brief, shining moment, Microsoft's nifty new Xbox One S dominated the video game headlines. And then Sony and its PlayStation 4 Pro happened. And now everything is different. Again.

Coming into this generation of consoles, I felt very strongly that Microsoft would ride its Xbox 360 momentum to great success while Sony would stumble along like it had been at the time, seemingly never able to get anything right. Key to this, I thought, were the ardently loyal Xbox fans, who had weathered Microsoft's $1 billion warranty fix for the Xbox 360, in many cases happily sending their consoles back multiple times just so they could keep playing. Even Apple couldn't hope for such loyalty.