MS has never been a company to successfully and consistently innovate. They're buyers and copiers, not innovators.
I mean they traded on DOS - bought from another guy and pimped as their own to IBM. Windows - copied from apple amongst others. Office -copied or bought bits from other companies. Those are their successful things.
Then there's a long list of copies that failed, and stuff they bought that either they squandered or it existed outside of MS control and was just allowed to survive in limbo - minecraft is a good example as is Flight Sim - both bought from outside and now seemingly left to drift along in zombie mode.
Is it any surprise that MS console strategy is to try and copy their competitors rather than innovate for themselves - it's what they've done in every market they enter...
Having taken that shit on MS - praise where praise is due. Bringing Live to consoles was a first and an important addition to consoles at the time and they were well ahead of the game. That was innovative and much kudos to them for forcing Sony to do better. It's a shame MS have stagnated on the technology though - or maybe it's just that that tech has played out for now.
Sony came into this gen with a vision about what they wanted to achieve, where major gains could be made, and developed a console to match. MS just took what they did last gen, copied Sony's SSD idea inelegantly and are now trying to win the bullet point war.