I disagree. While PSN and XBL are separate, just the concept of having a cross-platform gaming experience does seem next-gen worthy in my opinion. I mean just imagine yourself powering on your console, inserting the disc and playing (or launching the digital version). Now your at the start screen of your game, making your way to multiplayer and you get qued for your game. After you get done waiting your in the game lobby, and you notice your playing with only other Xbox users....how does this scenario make you feel? Do you feel limited? Do you feel like your only experiencing half of the games community? Do you happen to experience an intense desire to be able to play with a friend that is sadly bonded to the other half of that said games community? Now just imagine removing all these insecurities because the game has the compatibility to allow the Xbox one users to compete against and/or play with the ps4 users. Obviously a cross platform gaming community would take a bit of effort since multiplayer games are on servers and quite possibly run on different scripts or what ever needed to have games online / running as they currently do. But I reasonably hope that games in the future (even if its just one game) is cross platform compatible. It would sort of change the whole perspective of which console is superior and how this seems to matter. It might encourage Microsoft and Sony (stating these two franchise's names thinking they are the producers of these consoles) to either have a collaborated console or shared device / shared market. However there could still be the few console specific games, such as halo and gears of war. It would still have that marketing effect "the one that makes u either choose their product or you cannot play that game" but this purely thinking in terms of how to draw in / keep people using said product. In essence there are obvious kinks (ranging from small to enormous) that would have to be nullified, but the positive from this could be immense. The divided community that has you choosing a side of opinion could come to a unified community that is more connected on a communication basis if nothing else. It would not be a person starting an Xbox game topic, or a PlayStation game topic, it would be both bodies of gamers viewing, commenting, criticizing, accepting or rejecting. The concept of next-gen consoles keeping two bodies of players divided seems the same as the last, not to mention we already use this "divided opinion" concept in a majority of thing on a day to day basis (politically/socially/religious/culturally/etc) and a change from this division sounds positive.

#YouDon'tUnderstandBusiness

I disagree with you again. I obviously understand business (the statement dealing with the console specific games should indicate that to a degree.) I am just saying that we should not really focus on how to get people to pick and choose which box of hardware we use to run our disc based content / digit content and we should focus on having these people having a shared experience. Would be socially appealing to some to not have to deal with who you play with and who do not play with, because you would not have to make a choice depending on which investment your made, your choice would come fee free act of choice. Not to mention if cross platform existed in the first place you would be able to play with each an every friend who owned said game when ever. Might not be a big bright flashy dollar sign with this topic, so if money is what you want to focus on, keep on with the ideology that we need to be segregated and to get more bang for the buck so to speak, also accept/promote console specific games so people have to choose to buy the console to have access to their beloved halo/gears/GOW.

Microsoft and Sony will not work together. Why? Because they are competitors. Your grandiose responses will not change that fact. [spoiler]#WasteOfTime[/spoiler]

I'm sure if you went through the trouble to dig up the info about how their are competitors, you most likely have the same capability to find companies who have merged even though they were long life competitors / rivals. However I doubt you would go out of your way to look up companies who have done so since you probably do not want your perspective altered from what it is.