Dixres :
Correction to the article; the three companies mentioned do not compete with each other at this point of time.
Sonys Morpheus is focused on the PlayStation franchise. Microsoft will, obviously, go mainly for the Xbox market. Rifts primary concern is PC users while they do aim for a product that works on all platforms.
Out of the three mentioned products Rift has the most potential. As they are not affiliated with any single brand of consoles they have free hands, so to speak. If you're building a product for an existing platform you always have limits for how far you can go; such as machine specs. For example if Sony wants to build an HMD that works as well as the Rift, they'll have to invest approximately three times as much money into it. Quite obviously this will be visible in the retail price of the final product.
That's not to say I'm biased towards the Rift. To be honest I would much rather have something made by Sony if it were up to par but currently I wouldn't touch a Morpheus even with a stick if I had an Oculus Rift on hands - purely for the difference in quality.
I could go on and on about this topic but in the end what matters is that Microsoft will be out of the competition before long. Quite honestly they shouldn't get into the hardware side of business if they know what's good for them.
And for some predictions on the VR market some 10-ish years from now: Sony will likely hold a marketshare of 30-40% in the VR business while Rift will get around 50-65%. The final 10-15% will be shared between several smaller makers - some of which will grow to be bigger than either Sony or Oculus in a few years time. None of the smaller companies exist yet in 2014 as established companies although some are probably being brainstormed on already.
from what i know, the sony one is also geared for pc's unless something changed, microsoft is an unknown one right now, and the rift is working with everyone who will work with them with consoles as a possibility.
if you want my bets, the rift is going to split off and become 2 different things, one being the head mount and the second being the sensor hardware, because lets be honest, a display could easily be upgraded over time, hell, cellphones are probably going to try to push the resolution to a absolutely retarded degree, and most of us will probably have our first 4k and 8k device in the form of a phone... but the sensor hardware... they are trying to make that as good a possible right now, so future upgrades will be a bit harder...
after the first rift with it all built in, the second will be a kit, and the third will be just the display.
the sony side... they have a hard time competing with anyone quality for cost wise outside of their consoles, and they arent doing to good, so if the rift is successful, i can see them abandoning the hmd race entirely
now microsoft is in an interesting area, because they hate the pc side of their business so much, and want to be a console or tablet company, there is a good chance they will never adopt the rift and instead try their own and keep making new incarnations of it, if its good... if its bad they will declare it a failure and because really only a few games not made specifically for the rift would be better with it outside of niche "i made a roller coaster and want to ride it" type things, just not allow it at all until they are forced to.
i mean thinking of it, really all the rift is is a display with some sensors, anything could read them and display... its only a matter of a simple driver... hell if the consoles don't do it the people who hack them probably will figure out how.