They at least improved on shit.
They took dual analog joysticks and put them in better positions, made them more responsive, and created a superior controller (at least the Controller S was).
They pioneered the Xbox live feature, and now it's a huge success and works really well.
What's Sony done? They've ripped off tilt sensing from Microsoft/Nintendo, except its a shitty feature to begin with because its not full motion detection like the Wii.
They've ripped off the online service feature, except is sucks because there's no global friends lists and you have to set up a new friends list for every game, meaning u can't just go in and see what your friends are playing and play with them.
Meanwhile, copying achievements from Xbox without adding anything to it.
They haven't actually added anything of value to the whole process.