Didn't keep up with thread, but "threat" framing seems typical consolewar hyperbole overplaying rivalry/competition.
If it's an impactful way of delivering games, Sony is likely to emulate it to one degree or another.
Sony's tie-up with Epic suggests bigger things to come, and being vehicle for this on PC is obvious one.

Universal owned both IP's through the funding contract before either game was even made  Sony just had the publishing rights for the PS games they became Activision's later on when Vivendi the owner of Universal merged their gaming business that also included Blizzard with Activision to form Activison-Blizzard

Come to think of it, in the short term it was beneficial to Sony in my case. Thanks to gamepass (and releasing on PC) saving me the money for the console plus games, I put that money into a second PSVR unit, extra move controllers and more PSVR games. Thanks to gamepass I was playing No Mans Sky multiplayer with my kid, both in VR. It was pretty cool building together in VR.

That's also fair. But at the same time...do you think something like Uncharted 5 wouldn't sell 10 million copies? do you think a Bloodborne 2 wouldn't be profitable? For how relatively cheap the game would be to develop, wouldn't something like Jak 4 make a huge profit? 

I dunno, I do agree MOST decisions companies make are based on profits rather than respect or integrity (Look at pretty much everything EA, Ubisoft, and Activision does), but I think Sony and Nintendo do have some respect for their IP. That's why Nintendo doesn't do a new Mario or Yoshi game every single year. That's why they only make 3D Mario games when they have new ideas. That's why they only make one MarioKart per generation. (I hope, anyway). This is how we get things like Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima, developers wanting to move on from stuff like Killzone and inFamous. By being willing to move on, the PS brand is STRONGER with more variety in their games. I think Killzone is an alright game and I do love inFamous...but I think most people will agree that Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima are better games. And, by letting old franchises rest, it builds up demand for if/when they do return to it. I mean, I'd love to see an inFamous game on PS5, wouldn't you? Look how excited everyone is for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart after Insomniac did Spider-Man. Had they just serialized the game with yearly installments, even I'd be bored of that franchise now and it's one of my faves. 

I'm rambling. Blah. Sorry. I swear I had a point when I started. 

Same. Same. I have an entire wall ofshelves, two layers deep, for my DVDs, Blu-Rays, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch games. I also have, in the other room, a shelf full of PS1, PS2, PS3, Gamecube, Wii, WiiU, Xbox, and Xbox 360 games. I will never fully convert to digital only or service based models. It's nice for those who don't mind the limitations and enjoy the cost to value ratio, but something like GamePAss or PSNow will never have value to me in an interactive medium. 

I do differe with you on video streaming services, though. I have Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime. I think these services are good for convenience and for my family, but I still buy Physical Media whenever I can. But therein lies the difference. Passive media like Movies and TV are better for streaming because it's not interactive. It doesn't demand your input constantly, and therefore can be put on in the background while you do something else. A game isn't like that, so it's taking and commanding your time rather than being supplementary to whatever else you're doing. 

That might just be a me-thing. 

Please tell me I'm not the only one who remembers the Dreamcast was the first console with Internet and it collapsed spectacularly. 

Same stuff here, just like with the XO GaaS policy: too far ahead to be viable then. Too outdated to be viable now. 

I think they mean beyond. It also misses the fact that MS' first party just grew to gargantuan proportions. When you have Halo, Fallout, TES and Doom in your exclusivity portfolio, that kind of gets hard to compete with and MS is apparently not done just yet. 

I'm 44 years old.

I remember when you either had to rent a movie and dub it or you had to buy the movie on VHS for an insanely high price--often north of $80! Then movies reached a point where they were affordable and everybody had these huge collections. VHS tapes, DVDs, Blu-rays. Right now, gaming is at the beginning of the "Blu-Ray era". Continuing the movie analogy, at about that time, the idea of streaming movies had begun to catch on. People still collected but a lot of us, myself included, were more than happy just to download or stream. Yeah, there's movie I still want to own or see in theaters but I'm typically more than happy just streaming what's available or downloading what I can. I do still buy a lot of digital games but nowhere near what I was doing when I wanted to build a collection.

Game Pass is Netflix. There's a great selection so most of the time there's no reason to go outside of what they offer. I went from buying hundreds of dollars worth of new games a month to just buying maybe five or ten games all year--and most of those were on the Switch! I was a whale and my console of choice was Xbox.

Sony is going to have to match them. They already have their own service and it's getting better and better but they need to become the leader in this area or risk being "Blockbuster Streaming service" to Microsoft's "Netflix". Like it or not, subscription services are the future. Digital games are going to replace physical. Convenience is going to win out and, from personal experience, Microsoft is ahead of the curve.

It will lead to one of two things.  It won't happen overnight, but one of these WILL have to happen eventually.  Either Sony will have to improve PS now to he as good as gamepass (long way to go, but it can be done), or watch as MS continues to draw more and more consumer support as the digital age continues to develop. The value of gamepass is just too strong for people to prefer paying 70 bucks for each individual game.

And given Sony's current stance on BC and the Gamepass model...

uuuuuh, PS5 has more backwards compatible games (4000+) Vs at most Xbox's 3197, and while Microsoft is investing MORE in GamePass, you can't pretend Sony doesn't also have something similar with PSNow (and with the PS+ Collection being a part of PS+). They're not the same, as we've established, but they're similar enough that you can't really pretend Sony isn't trying or that Microsoft is pulling way ahead or something.