"Sony's first party wasn't good until second half of PS3" Myth or Fact?

[Wman1996]

Even as someone who has barely played Sony games released before 2009, it seems mostly a myth. Gran Turismo was a big hit for sure. Gran Turismo and Final Fantasy VII were more or less the 1-2 punch that made it impossible for N64 to come close to PS1 in sales globally.
Now a lot of pre-Uncharted Sony games were not developed in-house and some don't belong to Sony anymore (or at least the IP). Sony's first party did indeed not get huge consistently until around Uncharted 2 and especially Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us.
As someone else said, let's not exaggerate that Sony had a lot of quality or quantity of first-party titles in the first year of PS4 either. Excluding ports/remasters, you more or less had Bloodborne in 2015 and Uncharted 4 in 2016. There was Killzone and Knack at the start, but they weren't that popular.
2017 was when Sony titles started to become more consistent in release and quality on PS4. In 2018 you had the earth-shattering combo of God of War and Spider-Man which cemented PS4's legacy, as well as other titles like Ghost of Tsushima in 2020.