I have a PS5 (sadly from a scalper), and I begrudgingly got Plus to fully experience the PvP aspect of Demon's Souls but the fact that it comes with a bunch of PS4 games for free, especially a few that I've been meaning to buy, makes it worth the subscription.
I doubt Sony would have done this without the pressure from the Games Pass.
I think Microsoft know that the PS4 won last gen on the basis of the amazing exclusives it had. I think that Microsoft is going to put a lot of exclusive pressure on Sony this gen with their buying spree (Bethesda etc), and while it is very hard to find time for gaming, I'm glad we have both systems in my house.
Not completely impossible. I managed to purchase an Xbox Series X directly from Amazon UK on 20th December. Amazon also had sufficient consoles in stock they were able to not run out for more than 12 hours [1].
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/23/22852161/xbox-series-x-a...
They actually reported profit with game pass.