Yeah, I can specify how.
$10 price tag increase, you now have to pay $70. Although, you could argue that its because game dev budgets are getting crazy now. However, they almost attempted to sell you a shit game called Destruction All Stars (that's already dead, even after going on PS+ when it came out. Very hard to matchmake with people cause no one plays it)
Returnal looks good but most people I do not think are willing to shell out $70 for it.
-closing down Japanese studios and people leaving and focusing on the west and abandoning your heritage. Sony was always a Japanese company first and foremost.
-they stopped attending E3 which just reeks of "We're good enough people will buy our shit anyways, fuck everyone else.
-Their communication lately has been absolute dog shit and contradicting.
-Announcing God of War for 2021 in their September event. It was so obvious they knew themselves they weren't gonna make it anyways and it feels like they teased it for 2021 right before PS5 launch just to move more sales right before pre orders opened. How is this not arrogance?
Oh also, I work in the game industry myself and have concluded over 60 interviews across many different developers and publishers throughout in my years starting from 2013 and to now. And attended every single E3 since that time.
You could see changes every single year with companies and how they would treat the media questions and the type of answers you'd get.
While I never had a bad experience per say for the most part, you can still how their attitudes towards things would still change.
Leaving E3 isn't arrogant it's smart, it doesn't mean what it used to and every year people just leave disappointed. E3 is nothing more than 2 minute cinematic trailers with maybe 20 seconds of gameplay cut in at best, it's a joke now. When we had live game demonstrations on stage etc it meant something now it's just a commercial. Just look at how MS does the Xbox shows, CGI trailers, and then 90 minutes of basically sizzle reel, you don't need a conference for that. It's better to do it on your own time when your studios are ready to show something AND when you don't need to share the stage with everyone else over those few days. It also saves millions of dollars.
The $10 price hike is responsible business, they don't make a lot of games that have backend monetization and I'd rather they raised the price up front than start trying to build games around microtransactions to cover the costs. Do I wish we didn't have to pay the extra $10? sure but I also understand why it's there, we haven't hade a price hike on games in 2 generations even though the costs of making games has gone up. I remember paying $70+ for some N65 games so it's not like this is unheard of.
Closing studios in Japan is again just a childish fit some are having on forums, they've closed European and American studios in the past as well. Sony is based out of Japan and that's where it started but it's a global company now and it has been that way for a long time. Some keep complaining about "oh this guy who made a good game 10 years ago left" how does that matter now? What did Japan studio do on their own last gen that was worth a damn?
Announcing god of war didn't do a thing to move sales, they were going to be sold out for months even without the pandemic, now they'll probably be selling out every shipment the day the retailers put them up through the end of the year. Is MS arrogant for constantly announcing games 3-4 years ahead of time with CG trailers? They do it all the time now, Spencer is all talk but because he actually does talk to the media he gets a free pass constantly.
Talking to the media doesn't bother me one bit, gaming "journalism" is trash these days, people don't just cover things they have to offer "their take" etc and make it about how they feel about what was said vs just letting an interview speak for it's self.