Why the rush?
You'd think first priority is to get it in the hands of customers where the demand will be higher, then put it on cloud.
Cloud infrstructure can in theory offer gaming to more people than getting units into households. Just assuming random numbers but a console at home might be played on average by 1.3 people and rests several days per week. And those single units in one home would also share their puchases. A cloud unit might provide gaming to 1.8 people, with no rest days, and they all have to buy their subscription on their own.
I would say Sony could have made quite a big push in cloud gaming when they would have offered PS5 streaming for all the people that could not get a PS5 themselves when the bet on this early.
Might have been true for MS too, but to a much smaller degree.
I guess while MS doesn't trust VR to grow anytime soon, they thought streaming will and bet on it, and numbers shown that they lead despite not leading at all in anything else. Similar as Sony did bet prematurely when buying onlive and gaika and to this day not really being proud of the results and possibly not wanting it to be too disruptive to their traditional system.
This cloud expansion doesn't seem to work very well. Every time I want to play Xcloud in the evening, I see a 10 minute wait timer.
Interesting. So MS should have built up a decent server infrastructure with XSX blades but it is not enough.
I never waited once on PS3 or PS4 streams, but might be a different picture once Sony unlocks PS5 streams.
But the assumption that there is no market at all or no growing market is probably wrong otherwise the units would wait for players and not the other way round.