IJS, games like Among Us, Only Up, Wallpaper Simulator, Lawnmower Simulator, Fall Guys etc. didn't need to "build up a brand first" in order to sell and become hits. Now yes, maybe games like God of War and TLOU, or R&C aren't that common on PC but there's one of two ways to read that: either Sony has to acclimate that audience to those types of games (and the more aggressive they get at doing that, the more they risk devaluing the value proposition of the console), OR those kind of games just simply aren't of popularity on PC.
And if the latter, then it doesn't matter what Sony does because it will never be enough to help grow the actual player base for the ports on that platform. At least, as simply a publisher on PC. They would need to tie their games to an actual storefront & launcher they control, and leverage lots of vertical integration, in order to have a transformative effect. Preferably one that also accounts for any switch away from console, to cover the changes in revenue. But that could take years, and in the meantime they don't necessarily have to do the PC ports the way they currently do to build brand presence on the platform.
They could simply relegate the PC presence to select GaaS/live-service titles and leave it at that (and maybe spacing out any non-GaaS titles for several years, always ensuring an old entry doesn't get a port until a new installment is ready for console within a year's time).
The difference between Rift Apart and those other games is that it's actually an extremely high quality game using bleeding edge technology, the stuff that justifies owning a good gaming PC, so just off of that alone it should've done much better.
