Welp that just dashed my one remaining means of rationalizing this strategy of theirs.
I had just thought, if the NCSoft and GG games were basically the same (with maybe some slight gameplay differences, different graphics, maybe some different characters) but GG were focused on the PS5 version while NCSoft focused on mobile & PC, THEN I could understand the NCSoft game skipping PS5. As in that scenario, the GG game would effectively be the same title, just different in some ways. Maybe think of some older SNES/Genesis multiplats with differences like Sparkster or Rondo of Blood/Dracula X (the latter as a more extreme example).
But it sounds like the GG title is fundamentally different at a root level, so these are effectively two very different games at their core, let alone in other areas. So, I'm back to the original question: why is the NCSoft game skipping PS5? Would it have been better to give the NCSoft game a more anime aesthetic, to scale back the parallels between it and GG's GAAS? Or is GG's game going for that Sea of Thieves style the leaked screenshots suggested? Are the two games going to be aesthetically similar, and GG don't want competition for their Horizon game on PS5 (e.g, maybe NCSoft's version turns out to be more popular on the console which embarrasses GG and Herman Hulst)?
The perception problem wouldn't even exist if SIE hadn't already spent five years porting like 95% of their releases between 2017 - 2024 to Windows PC platforms like Steam, but they did. So here we are :/