That's awhile ago… But check some State of Play threads if you want to see if people care or not. Not long ago I was in a thread talking about Tides of Annihilation and being positive while lots of Sony fans were super negative about the lack of 1st party output. But nobody cares… ok lol
The internet is an increasingly negative place and an echo chamber... what you're basing reality on isn't real.
There are youtube channels dedicated to ragebait and clickbait. Spoiler, it's most of them. You've found people who are able to make a living through youtube views and they need to traffic that hate videos make. This turns the rest of the internet into an echo chamber around that hate.
It's a basic formula and you can always tell the signs. You can also tell the people who watch those videos because they parrot talking points and verbiage that you don't just find randomly.
The thing is reality comes crashing down on people and it only makes them angrier.
Among AAA publishers, there is not a single company that comes close to the production Sony has had over the last 5 years. They're in a league of their own. Does that mean they're immune to the nature of AAA games taking longer to develop? Obviously not.
Microsoft bought Zenimax and ABK and while their quantity is now much more than Sony's, their quality isn't anywhere close. They've still yet to produce a single GOTY candidate when Sony puts out 1-2 a year...
Sony has 13 nominations (most) and 3 wins (most). They'd have another if TGA had been around in 2013. The Last of Us would have won hands down.
There is no company investing in studios like Sony is (not just buying them). And yeah, it's not always going to work out like with Firewalk, but Sony has far more successes than failures. That they're essentially building out startup studios in this day and age is pretty miraculous.
TeamAsobi*
TeamLFG
Haven
Dark Outlaw Games
I put an astericks on Asobi, because they're not exactly a startup, but they are a new studio built out of Japan Studio that Sony cultivated and it's already paid dividends with a GOTY winner. They didn't have to buy anyone for 7 billion dollars or 70 billion dollars.