I think the "goals" of the consoles are really just how people are attributing the directions that the two companies seemed to be focused on. MS's initial reveal was well-received by the mainstream press, but panned by the hardcore gaming audience. Sony's initial reveal was, not opposite, but was received rather well by the hardcore audience. I don't think anyone really believes that Sony isn't in this game for the same reasons MS is, which is obviously profitability and maintaining/expanding their foothold in the living room.
But it was reassuring to see Sony, pretty much from day one, seemingly pay lip service to all the periphery features of their console and preach to the base. I think MS's miscalculation is that they expected the excitement for those periphery features to carry the casuals and "non-gamers" to purchase their console, completely ignoring the history of the Xbox and Xbox 360. Those consoles were not built on the casual/non-gamer markets, but with the support of the "hardcore" market that built up a lot of goodwill. Over time, as they added more functionality to the 360, the base grew and included people that wanted an easy streaming/netflix solution at a time when not many existed. At that point, the 360 probably had been through a price drop or two, which would have made the purchase more palatable, too.
What MS tried to do with the Xbone, was get the casuals to buy-in from day one, which is pretty much antithetical to being a casual. Casuals may have liked the features provided by the Xbone, but they probably didn't like the $499 price tag. And paying for access to paying for services like Netflix is no longer an option when so many devices are currently available that do it for free, with more on the way(PS3 is one of the top devices according to many articles). And that doesn't even account for the fact that casuals were just as likely to have heard news of the Xbone from a friend/family member who fits more into the traditional console market as they were to hear it from a press event/news release. And if the hardcore market was sour to the taste of the initial Xbone reveals, they probably wouldn't speak highly of the console.
As casuals go, once that word of mouth gets out, it's incredibly difficult to stop. After all of these 180s, how much of the good word is getting out to them. Heck, how many in the traditional markets soured to the initial reveals and just wrote MS off and haven't bothered to give them a second thought? How many have just soured to MS altogether this gen with the negative press surrounding their Surface tablets, Windows 8, and now the Xbone mishandling?
MS, imo, built a system for the traditional gaming market, but decided that they no longer wanted to primarily serve that market. In that respect, they are no different than the handful of publishers that seem to have shifted their focus from console/handheld gaming to the mobile arena. What they have found is that the two markets are not quite ready to be merged, and they are now scrambling to court the traditional markets. In this regard, they are very similar to Nintendo, who, with the Wii U, discovered that the casual market is fickle and fleeting and that casuals really couldn't care less for videogames.
Disclaimer: The above post was pulled entirely out of my ass with little regard for things like fact and reality. This is how I've interpreted MS's actions over the course of the Xbone launch rollout.