Gaming news sites in general have picked up the story about Sony and Indies:

https://kotaku.com/sony-charging-devs-at-least-25-000-for-playstation-sto-1847201141

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/06/sony_under_heavy_fire_for_handling_of_indies_on_ps_store

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-06-30-indies-criticize-sony-over-discount-policies-poor-communication-more

https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2021/06/30/playstation-store-visibility-twitter-rant-neon-doctrine-legend-of-tianding/

On Twitter more and more indie-devs are chiming in and it is claimed more stay silent but have similar experiences:

So no, VGC isn't conspiring against Sony or you. The story just broke at this time, as it happens.

EDIT:

I should add: a few years back Nintendo was blasted for their handling of indies (and rightfully so). They had barriers implemented like maximal download size of games and minimal sales before any revenue was going to the dev. And also bad communication as in the current affair. Nintendo improved their handling of indies since then. Maybe Sony reacts to the critic and improves as well.

I saw it covered a lot before VGC covered it. Them being posted back to back probably has more to do with the fact that they are written by the same guy (who tends to write articles back to back all the time). 

I can understand where you are coming from, but maybe calm down on the paranoia a bit, yea? 

I think we both know than to believe that I'm someone possessed of a herd mentality. That I will just leave at that.

Lest you get the wrong impression, while we obviously have our disagreements, it's not you or the fact that you have different opinions about Sony's first-party library overall that I take issue with. Matter-of-factly, I find you to be among the most reasonable contributors to VGC. You actually listen to other people. Sometimes we land on agreement and sometimes we don't, but the point is that we can have constructive conversations, which is why I'm responding to you right now and not someone else. Sometimes we land on agreement and sometimes we don't. That ain't the issue.

The reviews mentioned come back to the two of you...yes and no. (I could actually add the Spider-Man: Miles Morales review to this list even for a sixth example from within the last year and a half or so, but the amount of discrepancy between that score and the MC average is smaller, which is why I didn't mention that one before. Also, I've not actually played that particular game myself yet, so that's another reason I didn't mention it before.) The real issue to me is one of official sponsorship, as in why only people with relatively negative opinions (again, gauging relative to like average review scores on Metacritic as a kind of barometer) of seemingly Sony's entire first-party library are ever tasked with reviewing their games in an official capacity anymore, as contrasted with how say Nintendo's library is treated. Nintendo fans review Nintendo games. Sony detractors review Sony games. That's much more than just the two of you as individuals. That's an institutional decision about what opinions to sponsor and not. That is called institutional bias and the existence of it here at this point is not rationally debatable, but a fact.

What can be debated though are my perceptions of annoying little personal vendettas afoot by the staff here in general that correspond logically with this attitude I'm describing. For example, I was not aware of the stories highlighted by @Mnementh. Since none were referenced in the article in main article in question, my presumption was that this had been an investigation original to the VGC staff produced with remarkable timing.

One can be assured that I have my disagreements with some of Sony's recent corporate decisions as well, the biggest of which being the decision to consolidate the PlayStation Japan Studios. A newfound lack of interest in supporting smaller game developers outside the framework of gobbling them up (which honestly is probably something most such developers would love to have happen to them so long as they get to retain their creative freedom) doesn't help either and serves a narrative that says the company is becoming more profit-focused than it was during the PS4 era. Matter-of-factly, that sort of concern was the basis for the OP of this thread. I was seeking to voice concern that the company's investments in genuinely creative projects that have taken a lot of risks like Returnal may be shut down in the future if they don't make enough money.

No one takes more risk and has been more innovative than Nintendo: the Switch is the most genius home-console made in decades. Fact. And not long ago, Nintendo changed the direction of the industry with the Wii and the copycats followed. Impressive for a company with wallets no where as deep as SONY's, let alone MS. 

With that said, comparing SONY's efforts to MS is flat out laughable to be honest. You don't have go all out praising SONY, but credits where credit is due. SONY defines the single-player games driven by stories. They set the standards for what a story-driven game is going to be like every few years, that's hardly "what everyone else is doing". Don't believe me? Ask MS.

Moreover, SONY is actively trying to push the gaming medium in the VR direction, their attempts so far have mediocre but they continue to invest and learn. MS, as always, stands on the sideline and to copy the next successful endeavour, it's the philosophy that most of the company runs by anyway, not just their gaming division. They couldn't even come up with something like the DualSense.

Also, saying that SONY relies on their existing big series' is false. The PlayStation brand was a poorly run business until very recently, and had no legacy besides being the default console for third parties (even when SONY was a literal dick with the PS3 lol), it's one of the reasons the PS3 did so poorly initially, SONY had nothing to fall back on from the previous 2 generation. In fact, the only two "big series" that you can trace back to the PS1/PS2 era (GOW & GT), every other IP is fresh or relatively fresh, the fact that they now have many IPs to rely on is a testament to how impressively quick they're working on new IPs, which is inherently risky. If they maintain this performance during the PS5 era, they'll end up with creating more "big series" and the PS brand, for once, will have pillars to stand on and weather the storms MS throws their way. The way Nintendo have weathered and will continue to weather every storm MS&SONY threw their way. 

I'll do the numbering thing 'cause I think it just makes it clearer what I'm responding to at any given time.

[1] I'm just using MC as an arbitrary gauge simply to have a gauge. Ain't meaning to imply you gotta agree with the average critic. I know I disagree with the critical consensus fairly often. I mean the fact is that I do look at what a game's average review score is and consider that before I buy it. It's not the only thing I consider by any means, but it is something, and I suspect that's the case for most people. That I think does reveal that most of us do indeed tend to place at lease some credence on these things.

[2] Well that makes sense.

[3] I didn't even read those reviews because I wasn't interested in any of those games myself. Didn't realize that Paul had reviewed any Nintendo games since giving Luigi's Mansion 3 a score of 6! And yes, I've noticed that the two of you have a penchant for scoring first-party games in general, and indeed many video games in general, worse than most would, and conversely some other, typically more obscure titles, much higher than most people would. Just, like you say, contrarian views of things, I guess. Sometimes I feel like that too. Prolly why I prioritized getting a Series X before PS5 (and now kinda regret that decision). Or for example, whereas most people buy Nintendo systems primarily for Nintendo games, by contrast when the Switch initially launched in early 2017 to immense commercial success, I wasn't interested. I bought mine only after the announcement of Metroid Prime 4 at that year's E3, mainly for the promise of that game. To this day, I own but a handful of Nintendo games for it and use it almost exclusively to play indie games. (It's become my default indie machine, and it sure looks like it's gonna remain so, I might add.) Conversely, I like PlayStation systems these days for the first-party libraries and largely ignore mainstream third-party publishers altogether (simply no interest in the latest Assassin's Creeds and such). So yeah, in some respects, I think I understand and even share this strong sense of independence.

Anyway, getting back to the subject of VGC's official reviews, I was thinking of more high-profile Nintendo games like the cases of Paper Mario: The Origami King and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, falling within the same window of time, for example. Both of these titles were reviewed by others and scored an 8, which is higher than VGC has scored any Sony title to my knowledge in years now. In fact, as I recall, the former was the leading VGC staff pick for Game of the Year! I believe these facts by themselves serve as an adequate counterpoint. (Nothing against either, mind you. I've enjoyed them both (and Luigi's Mansion 3 ) plenty myself. Just pointing out a contrast.)

It would be funny if like I were to do an official game review, I think. I don't believe the world's ready for that.

What I remember:

Popular vote was won by TLOU2.

Staff vote was for Animal Crossing: New Horizons in first, followed by Ori in second. Or maybe it was the reverse of that, possibly, but point is that it was weighted favorably by the staff against the popular vote winner, thus serving to reinforce my point.

This is the same issue as I mentioned with this thread in general.

You are starting with noticing some phenomena. Then, you are skipping straight to the end where you assert that your proposed explanation is in fact the explanation. Without doing stuff like looking to see if your opinion can be verified or backed up with some kind of evidence or logical argument.

You made a specific claim about first party reviews (that Nintendo's are closer to the MC average than Sony's) so lets see if that checks out.

Last 10 First Party/Exclusive Nintendo Games

Hyrule Warriors AOC- Metacritic Score 77 VGC Score 50. -27 points below MC.

Monster Hunter Rise- Metacritic Score 88 VGC Score 7. -18 points below MC.

Bravely Default II- Metacritic Score 76 VGC Score 7.5. -1 below MC.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars- Metacritic Score 82 VGC Score 7. -12 below MC.

Paper Mario Oragami King- Metacritic 80 VGC Score 8. Even with MC. 

Pokemon Sword and Shield- Metacritic 80 VGC Score 7. -10 below MC.

Luigi's Mansion 3- Metacritic 86 VGC Score 6. -26 below MC. 

Mario and Sonic- Metacritic 69 VGC Score 7. -1 below MC.

Link's Awakening Metacritic 87 VGC Score 80. -7 below MC.

AC New Horizons- Metacritic 90 VGC Score 80. -10 below MC. 

Last 10 Sony First Party Games

Returnal- Metacritic 86 VGC Score 6.5. -21 points below MC. 

Sackboy's Big Adventure- Metacritic 79 VGC Score 7. -9 below MC.

Miles Morales- Metacritic  85 VGC Score 7.5. -10 below MC. 

Ghost of Tsushima- Metacritic Score 83 VGC Score 5. -33 below MC.

Iron Man VR- Metacritic 73 VGC Score 7 -3 below MC. 

TLOU 2- Metacritic 93 VGC Score 7. -23 below MC.

Persona 5 Royal- Metacritic 93 VGC 9. -3 below MC. 

Spider-man PS4- Metacritic 87 VGC 8. -7 below MC

Detroit: Become Human- Metacritic 78 VGC 8. 2 above MC.

God of War- Metacritic 94 VGC 9. -4 below MC.

Alright. So, based on the last ten reviews of each system's most recent reviewed exclusives, here are some conclusions that can be drawn.

First off, they don't review that many exclusives. We had to dig pretty far for both systems, a little farther for the PS4 which may be explained either by bias, what Sony chooses to send out for review, or an overall higher first party output from Nintendo. But, based on the small number of games in the sample, the data can be skewed by a couple of outliers.

On average Nintendo games have been scored 11.2 points lower than the MC average. So, certainly no pro Nintendo bias... Unless the staff is so crafty that the intentionally gave Nintendo games lower scores, but then gave Sony EVEN LOWER scores than that, to really throw people off their trail. 6 Nintendo games scored within 10 points of the MC average. Of the remaining 4, two were between 10 and 20 points lower, and two games were more than 20 lower. 

On average Sony games have been scored 11.1 points lower than the MC average. Pretty damn close to the difference in Nintendo games and MC, except very slightly closer to the Metacritic average. Seven out of 10 games scored within 10 points of the MC average (one scoring above the MC average). Of the remaining three, two were more than 20 points off from the MC average, and one was more than 30 off from the average.

Honestly, this came out so close that maybe I'll be accused of being part of the pro-Sony conspiracy going on backstage, but there you have it. Feel free to double check my work, but I doubt I made an error large enough to fundamentally change the facts. Those facts are that on average VGChartz tends to score both Nintendo and Sony games below the industry average. I think this reflects overall problems with VGC's scoring system, but if you think this is a particular bias against Nintendo and Sony, then feel free to see how Microsoft and third parties compare in this regard.

As far as your claim that there is an overall bias against Sony that is evidenced by the review scores, I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that (unless you have some compelling data). It seems there is some heavy confirmation bias where the occasions where data that fits your theory (TLOU scoring 23 points below the MC average or Animal Crossing scoring in line with the average) is included, but data that goes against it (Hyrule Warriors scoring 27 points below the industry average, or Sackboy scoring in line with industry average) is dismissed or reframed as part of the conspiracy (positive Sony reviews are only made to maintain plausible deniability). In reality though, Sony games are scored almost identically in reference to Metacritic as are Nintendo games.

So before making claims, particularly ones that attack people's integrity, you should probably pause and check to see if there is actually any evidence to support your hunches.

Pre Edit Edit: Made some slight errors with Sony's games. Astro Playroom should have been included as should FFVII Remake since I'm going with exclusives here, and not necessarily games published by the first party directly (feel free to see how the numbers would work out if you only counted published titles). This would knock Detroit and God of War from the list. FFVII scored three points above the MC average, and Astro scored 13 points below. With this change, the ten most recent Sony games would be 11.9 points below the MC average, almost exactly the same as Nintendo.

Either there is some really high level conspiracy going on among the writing staff; i.e. lets score most of Sony's releases close to the industry average so we can score the big releases REALLY poorly and if anyone ever tries to average them together they won't be any wiser BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!... or, it could also mean that there isn't any systematic bias against Sony, which is the theory I think makes more sense.

...You have more facts than me. That's not fair!

Lol. I actually looked into review scores and their comparison to MC scores as part of an unrelated post about the review system in general that I never wound up posting. So I had like a 5 month head start.

I had generally the same thoughts as you regarding Nintendo games being underrated and started looking into it and found that the review scores are just low in general.  I think people are just more likely to take note of it when it happens to games/companies they feel strongly about.

I believe when they were looking for new writers they mentioned their review scores being lower than the MC average as a point of pride, so their applicants are more likely to score things negatively. So, they just sort of have more negative slant by design, although not against any particular company. I think that's a bad policy in general, but not my website. 

Well actually, in a bid to salvage a sliver of my ego, I've just done some further math and will point out that...

1) You missed the Death Stranding review, which is the single most extreme case (-42 compared to MC!). Replacing the score for God of War (the oldest Sony title on your list) with Death Stranding's changes the average VGC score for the last 10 Sony-published and PlayStation-exclusive games from -11.1% compared to Metacritic averages to -14.9 instead, which indeed suggests Sony titles fare worse than Nintendo titles in the scoring overall these days on VGC, though granted not by a landslide margin.

...AND...

2) While 10 is a nice, round number that it's understandable to go with, the issue I've perceived here of is new, as in confined to the last two years or so, seeming to have begun at right around the time that Jim Ryan became President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment in April of 2019. As such, an applicable metric would exclude games released in 2018 like God of War, Detroit: Become Human, and the first Spider-Man, as I didn't see the treatment of Sony games here as being generally unfair before 2019. I also wasn't mentally including third-party releases like Persona 5 Royal, but only first-party titles. If we make these changes, the marginal difference expands quite a bit further in Nintendo's favor. Nintendo's average remains unchanged at -11.2 compared to Metacritic averages because no Nintendo games you listed are thus eliminated (indicating that Nintendo games are more often reviewed by VGC in the first place) while Sony's becomes -20.1 compared to MC scores, indicating that a fairly large and clear scoring discrepancy favoring Nintendo has indeed emerged in the last couple years, be it intentional or otherwise. So I'm not crazy after all!

I'll add that I think the main reason I've perceived the gap to super massive has to do with the fact that my favorites among these have been titles that fared the worst relative to say their average scored on Metacritic.

Returnal: -21

The Last of Us Part II: -23

Death Stranding: -42

Whereas, in contrast, I didn't even read some of the more negative reviews afforded to Nintendo games. So on top of what I've just pointed out, just the psychology resulting from this finite exposure has also been a factor in my mind magnifying and inflating the reality, making it seem even more extreme than it actually is.