A big part of the success of the Xbox (and maybe it's not the Japan destroyer the fanboys wanted it to be) was that they really really let it be its own product, and develop an ecosystem. They not only made it a "PC for your TV" which was widely what it was held as on release, but also expanded the capabilities of what a console was expected to do.

Sadly they also popularized and solidified the "pay to play games online" feature of consoles, vs the "online play is free except for MMOs" that PCs normally have.