Agreed JT, its wrangling for position, but purely a marketing team battle. Unfortunately however, I talk to people in Microcenters regularly - a lot of people who love to talk computer stuff but many of them not all that well informed. I think both MSI and Gigabyte know their audience well, and the flashy features and things that don't mean much of anything right now do actually win customers in many cases... For a salesman, its easy to convince someone to pay 10 bucks extra for PCIe 3.0, unless they want to save a few bucks to buy the "old" technology PCIe 2.0. Not many consumers want to buy new old tech, unless they know better that its a meaningless differentiation.
Basically, its why our community is the exception - we are well informed in our purchasing decisions, unlike the masses.