It's even questionable if their "playing it straight to the gamers" was a no-brainer safe thing. To be honest it was actually a bit of a risk, because the assumption is/was that a new console launching these days has to knock it out of the park with anything and everything that makes it look like a media-friendly device. That a system simply could not sell to the masses based just on its games. Before all the fuck-ups, at a glance it seemed like Microsoft was actually taking the less-risky approach (ironically now it's evident they have, but for wholly different reasons not related to marketing). By the market's account, Sony had more to lose with the "for the gamers" push.
The problem there, was that as we now know, MS overestimated the eagerness of the casual segment to buy a next-gen system this early, and marginalized the core/hardcore who almost always are there exclusively for the first year or so. They either figured the casual market for consoles was unchanged from 2010 (when Wii fell off) or that Kinect garnered new loyal casual customers for them. Wrong on both fronts.
Sony was getting a lot of praise from the core/hardcore since February but there was no predicting if they'd be enough to sustain initial sales momentum. It's pretty evident now that the core market is still strong, and taking the traditional approach of starting narrow and spreading out the appeal down the line, is still the best way to go.
Agreed with this, though in the case of getting back casuals/non-gamers, I certainly don't think that the "All-in-One Entertainment Box" would easily make casuals/non-gamers go ga-ga over it like Microsoft thought it would. Tablets, Roku's, & even newly modeled Smart TV's, etc. have already taken over the living room, if anything.
And Microsoft certainly relied on Kinect more along with it's $500 million advertising just to get more Xbox 360 sales, & while PS Move didn't do so spectacular, PS3 managed to catch up to Xbox 360 in sales
without even relying too much on PS Move, because
1.) Sony didn't forget about their core fans like Microsoft did, &
2.) Sony were bringing out more 1st/2nd party exclusives. Even Japanese 3rd party games were becoming exclusive on Playstation platforms. Keep in mind that the Xbox 360 had a LTD of 45+ million & that PS3 had a LTD of 41+ million or 42+ million before Kinect & PS Move officially came out.