No they can't just copy-paste.
Microsoft has spent years and billions of dollars designing and building Azure, that cannot be replicated by a smaller company like Sony overnight.

I was leaning towards the fact that PS Now was initially and still is seen as streaming, though it does allow downloads as of more recently, correct.

That doesn't help me personally either as my net is slow as molasses, which doesn't change my response much.

I wonder how many pass on Game Pass for similar reasons?

You wouldn’t say that if it launched day 1 right?

It may help for certain gamers. Downloads in some cases for certain games are becoming ridiculous. Not tied to PS Now specifically though.

Recently trying to get CODMW up and running literally took me a week due to all the downloads overnight, and then numerous times the following week, a couple more large overnight downloads because the trigger was linked to entering that specific section of the game. To make it worse, this was all after installing a physical copy of the game. With the most recent update, which wouldn't allow me to download even with 115GB free, I've quit playing CODMW. It's just way too much hassle. While the game ain't stellar, it's the necessary (updates) downloading that had me give up on it.

I personally like to be able to give every portion of a game a try, and it's rare for me to totally disregard some portion for whatever reason. Having so much to download to be able to play all sections of a game doesn't really help. It would just make me want to pay less for games since I may not end up getting to try the entire game due to too much data to be downloaded, or flat out because of the hassle in general.

It's pretty bad when even physical games are becoming a nuisance, so digital only seems like a nightmare to someone in my position.

Legitimately curious, you are entitled to the cross gen opinion. But why not day 1 access? The games are the same quality, and ultimately you save a ton of money the more 1st party games are released per year. 

I mean the idea of playing Dreams, Last of Us 2, and Ghosts of Tushima for $10 per month, on top of whatever else PS Now offers, can save you hundreds of dollars.

That’s right. Would that in your opinion change your stance on PS Now from something you wouldn’t care if it shut down  to something you’d consider?

I just want it here in Australia so I can play Persona 5

Because I think it's way more important that the masses are "forced" to migrate so the next gen consoles can build a good install base, and we get the best support possible from developers. If the ps5 has build a 100m install base, and they then decide to release all of their exclusives on psnow, that would be great. But it would suck if they would all become cross-gen early on, just because the install base isn't there yet and developers would have to make sure all their games run on ps4 and the average pc too.

You have to understand that this is the fist time in history, next gen consoles launch that are far more powerful than the average gaming pc. By making all their 1st party games available on pc, developers will constantly have to think "Will this run on normal HDD and a GTX1060 too?" Let alone the ancient jaguar cpu of the ps4/Xone. We simply have no idea how that;ll influence their vision and scope of these next gen games, but I'm sure it would have been better if developers could just focus on a single platform instead and take full advantage of it. With Psnow that is a bit different as on pc you can only stream the games and the 1st party ps5 games won't be cross-gen.

I know they can't just build their own cloud server network overnight, but they won't need to as they're already using Azure for PsNow. If this whole Cloud thing does become the future, wouldn't it just like we're seeing now with Netflix? As a subscription service, they're far bigger than Amazon Prime and have a much better brand awareness, but Netflix uses Amazon's Cloud servers for their back-end.

As a content provider I just don't see MS doing that great against Nintendo or Sony, who will have a much stronger brand and will likely corner the market if gaming subscriptions does become the future. Off course, MS will make a ton of $$$$ if they can provide the Cloud platform for them. But even there they would have to compete with Google and Amazon and there's no guarantee the major content players like Nintendo and Sony would stick with Azure. I mean, didn't MS provide Netflix with their servers until they switched to Amazon? This is probably why MS is looking at Google and Amazon as their main competitors going forward.

My theory is that MS will be exiting the console market after the next gen and, instead will focus on becoming the world's biggest cloud gaming platform provider. https://www.equities.com/news/microsoft-has-quietly-made-the-switch-of-the-century Just like with Amazon, this is where MS will be making the big $$$$. Unfortunately, that's also why they are not too fussed about winning the console war next gen because they're already looking past that.

Honestly, all I wonder is how exact MS are able to get certain games on their service while Sony aren't. Game Pass has KH3, a game only just a year old yet, Sony don't. PS Now can handle PS4 games, so why isn't KH on it? I really do wonder on the compensation MS are giving these games companies for it and if Sony just aren't willing to meet that.