Interesting article but it misses some points which kind of invalidate the whole argument.
After saying Sony is positioning PS Now as a Game Pass competitor, at a lower price point, it then goes to say that people will be inclined to get a Series X because they can have Game Pass and not have to worry about what games to get... all of that while backward compatibility is going to be a thing on the PS5 as well, PS Now is already a decent competitor at a cheaper price and will likely get a lot of spotlight once PS5 is revealed. I dont see where the advantage is for the next gen, it just happens that Microsoft started the thing mid gen because they were yet again losing the gen and they are already subsidizing Game Pass for ultra cheap prices in order to secure thousands/millions of players to go Xbox next gen, so right now it does look like Game Pass is the real deal, but there is no reason to believe Sony wont improve or just start to actually advertise PS Now properly in under a year.
Then it goes on to talk about Streaming and how Game Pass puts Microsoft ahead... we don't know if they will let you stream games for free from their own servers, they only confirmed that you can stream from your own console for free. And guess what, PS Now can already do that, and stream from either your console or their servers to your PC, PS4, phone or tablet. And they've been doing it for years! Right now more than 100 million people have a PS4 and that library will carry over to the PS5, talking about having all the Xbox One Game Pass titles being available on the next console for streaming doesnt look that much better as it initially sounds.
The BC talk, the 2013-2003 vs 2020-2010 difference makes no sense to me. Anyway, they were the first to take BC seriously but the competition is catching up and I doubt that once Series X and PS5 launch more than a few thousand people in the world will decide what to get based on the possibility of playing 10 year old games through BC. Cross-save is great and I'd guess with Sony talking about releasing stuff on PC that it will also be a thing on those select titles, while cross play is another feature Xbox supported and well, as far as I know Sony already catch up on that, only depends on the devs to make it work.
The cherry on the cake is the last paragraph: 'we are not gonna see Game Pass on PS4. On Phones? Probably!". As I said above, PS Now is ALREADY a thing on phones, pcs, tablets and the PS4. They talk about stuff Microsoft is going to do while ignoring that Sony already does some of those things and is probably going to do anyway. As I mentioned above, Microsoft started the next gen race early because they threw the towel this gen and are trying to secure the player base with subsidized subscription (plenty of Game Pass deals all year long).
