Alright, now that the dust has settled and months have passed, has PlayStation Plus tiers really delivered a "counter punch" to Game Pass? Or is it merely a copycat?

Sorry folks, no written version, it's a discussion vid xD

Gamepass is an enhanced version of PS Now.

After all these videos, can I ask what everyone must be asking themselves: what is the gaming 5?
At the end of your video you say "See you next time on the gaming 5", I have no idea what that is.

1. PS+ and Now (Extra) are older than Game Pass and they don't compete directly.

2. I fail to see how 5 hours of Cyberpunk trial isn't enough, we're getting a bit greedy there I feel. Game Trials looks like a neat feature but admittedly I know very little about it.

3. Unless I missed it, you forgot to mention that base GamePass ($120 annually) doesn't provide access to online multiplayer which all PS+ tiers do. Afaik that requires GamePass Ultimate ($180 annually) or Xbox Live Gold (which is awful compared to PS+ Essential).

The rest of the video is fine and informative.

Edit:

Another advantage PS+ has is that the monthly Essential tier games are permanently locked to your account once you add them to your library, these are potentially hundreds (?) of additional games on top of the 700+ Extra library. The same can be said about Xbox Live Gold but that service doesn't hold a candle to PS+ Essential which it directly competes against.

Day 1 games will always be the difference. Right now Xbox is struggling with 1st party releases this year. Even though Grounded is great and so might be Pentiment, it doesn't make up for the AAA releases. Even with Xboxs 1st party issues, GP still has plenty of day 1 releases each and every month. It's hard to beat that value.

PS+ started with the digital game 'rental' thing (2010), wasn't required for online until ps4. But there's probably an older version.
Games with Gold started 2013 Gamepass started 2017, after EA Access 2014.
OnLive started with streaming in 2010, which PS Now took over in 2014. XBox Cloud Gaming started 2020.

PS+ tiers are just a name change to bring it all under the same name.
Gamepass is simply PS+/PS Now/EA Access on steroids with MS money backing it.
Embrace, extend, extinguish. We're currently in the extend phase.

All Microsoft Studios games are added to Gamepass on their release day and stay there forever. Enough said.

The irony is that PSNow started as the acquired streaming service which many people, myself included, absolutely hated.  Streaming just wasn't it, and it wasn't until the appearance of Game Pass did PSNow move to a game download model (even though not all games were downloadable).

Haha, the irony is that the channel launched as "The Wii U Five".  Then as I added more platforms, it became "The Gaming Five".  Then, eventually I started a website, but could not grab the domain names I wanted, so for a moment in time, the channel and everything was "ZyroXZ2 Entertainment Gaming".  The name was too long and no abbreviations existed that "made sense", so I later simply rebranded the whole thing to my own username at which point I would not have to worry about the "channel name" because my own username would not ever change.

The only reference to "The Gaming Five" is now the playlist in which all main series videos are posted.  So for people who use the playlist to watch videos, the "Gaming Five" is the main videos I post.  If this makes you curious, it's because it contains all the reviews, discussion videos, unboxings, etc. in a single playlist as opposed to just watching purely my reviews, or just my discussions, or just unboxings which all have their own playlists.

Call it hindsight 20/20, like many people who start out, I had no idea how I'd manage the "future" content/plans until they happened and I had to keep adjusting.

Nope, you didn't miss it: you got me on that one.  I'm a GPUlt sub, so I never even noticed that XBL was NOT included in base GP.  Well shit, a mistake in my video.

I guess I'll just have to die, then.  You did it, you killed me.

*croaks*

Side note on your edit: what do you mean by "locked"?  If your sub lapses, so does your access to any PS+ games you downloaded.  XBL suffers this same issue, of course.  I had let my PS+ sub lapse for awhile since I didn't need it, and of course, any PS+ games I had downloaded would not play.

The bit I replied above to the other post: PSNow stayed a streaming service until Game Pass was already out, and then they moved to a download format (though not all titles were available for download).  Believe it or not, Game Pass DID come in and force Sony to make a change to their already offered services because EA Access sure as hell didn't lo...  If anything, Game Pass could be credited with pressuring PSNow to shift to downloads.  Competition is always a good thing!

I do NOT, however, remember "game rentals" in PS+.  Did I miss something?  Admittedly, I didn't sign up for PS+ until it was required for online play, though it still happened before I ever signed up for XBL...

PS+ started with 2, sometimes 3 'free' games per month, build your library. It's not free, it's rentals until you stop paying, same as gamepass. Well not exactly the same, ps+ never removes games from your library. PS+ also started with 1 hour trials and of course discounts. PS+ even experimented with making the game available a couple days earlier to subscribers.

PS+ was/is the download part which was also extended to PS Now. Probably as a reaction to GP, or maybe it was in the cards already. It's cheaper for Sony when you use your own hardware to run the game...