This isn’t really all that surprising. It’s just Xbox once again leveraging money in exchange for a potential growth in subscription sales. This has been their strategy for the past three years and they’ve been successful at it. Though I am def curious as to where the well stops.
Anyways, Sony never really has a chance at being the leaders in the cloud gaming thing despite being one of the firsts to dip their feet in it. The infrastructure for it just simply isn’t there, they’re more of an entertainment & electronics company than a software & tech company. The PSNow service or whatever replaces it will still continue to be a accessorial service appealing to those who have already bought into the PS ecosystem.
If Sony’s brand wasn’t as strong as it is, they’d be dead on arrival this generation - but 8 years of being the best publisher in the business and showing a dedication to quality & innovation is what sold 100mil+ PS4 units and put them up basically on Nintendo’s level of brand awareness &, to a degree, even loyalty. People trust Sony to offer them a top-tier gaming experience even if it costs them a premium. And now Sony has built up a strong collection of franchises & characters that are hard for consumers to pass-up / deny.
This can all be seen in the PS5’s launch: not only did they secure an actual launch lineup to keep the focus on what’s new, the console came w/ highly marketable features such as the DuelSense & Tempest 3D audio. These are the types of things that catch the attention of the average consumer, just like all of Nintendo’s various “gimmicks” & cross-plat games will sell better on PS5 because of them.
Like I said, at the end of the day, it’s a hardware/ electronics & entertainment company (Sony) vs a software / tech company (Microsoft) & the two are just playing to their strengths. The competition will likely only produce good things for the consumers overall, though it might be as good of a generation as any to buy into both ecosystems b/c exclusive content will continue to drive the industry.