The model Sony/MS chose to pursue is not sustainable and honestly for consumers who cheer that on they should get a reality check that games honestly of that scale should cost more.
The Tekken producer said last week game costs today are 10x more than the 90s, but a $50 Playstation game circa 1997 would be like $85+ and that's only accounting for inflation *alone*. That doesn't even touch the fact that the budget is 10x higher. There's a fair case these games should be a costing $100+ each. Now all of the sudden those same people cheerleading never ending expansion in budgets would suddenly get a reality check in their own wallet and probably start complaining very loudly about game costs.
It's also no wonder most games today are really just PS4-tier titles with things like ray tracing and a few other effects added on top. Which honestly is a lot smarter than bankrupting your studio and having several hundred people lose their jobs, for what? So "Little Timmy" can have light beams coming through the fog and more bushes in the background of a game that otherwise plays exactly the same? Like this shit is just stupid, it's so not worth it. Even PS4 tier can bankrupt a studio and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create. God Of War 2018 and Horizon: Forbidden West (which looks as good as anything else on the PS5 but was developed as PS4 game as well) cost $200+ million even before marketing costs. And those games get heavily bundled with PS4/5 hardware to boost their numbers, what if you're just a normal 3rd party trying to make a game without benefit of that? Even a "PS4 level" high end game could cost clear of a $100+ million, maybe even $200 million.
Sony may be turning a profit but even they know their setup is a bad one which is why their new president is already crowing about wanting out of the current business model. The userbase for Playstation/XBox consoles is not growing, it's the same or even smaller than what the PS2/GCN/XBox had 20 years ago, but you have development costs that are far higher, that isn't a good formula.
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