Jimbo fucked Sony Studios by having them focused on live-service shit.
Who is them?
So....if you mean the teams working on that online stuff, those are also teams that spent a large part of their careers working on online games, who would do that better then teams that are used to doing that?
So "Jimbo fucked Sony" by having a team like Bungie who does online games, do...what? Online games? huh? lmfao
Factions is being done by a part of ND that has worked on online before as we had online with Uncharted series and The Last Of Us 1
Firewalk studios is made up of former Bungie developers, doing a multiplayer game would be something they are familiar with.
Haven Studios is a new studio formed from a former Ubisoft studio was already making a online game before Sony purchased them
More so, even if the argument was some fear that Sony would force teams to go online only, why haven't we seen that yet? Why even buy teams that do that if the goal was to have all teams do online and not some? Why would Insomniac be doing Spiderman 2 this fall and it be single player online when clearly it can be co-op seeing how the game is about multiple super heros?
Could Sony ONLY WANTING ONLINE not just force them to do Resistance 4, Resistance trilogy with online.....FUSE 2 lol So...they have an avenue they could have went with all of that, but I don't see any evidence that Sony is forcing any studio to do online, I see more evidence they want the studios that have a history of this...to just do this and allow the teams that normally focus on single player to continue to do that.
So I believe that focus on buying those teams was because the online stuff done by the existing studios failed to move units. I remember when folks kept making noise about Warhawk or a Socom reboot etc and I felt like, who the fuck would make it? Those games failed then and in order for them to do well, maybe they need a team that has a success in that area instead of their core teams trying to do that concept.
So you might see those purchases has a negative thing, thus this allows teams like Sony Bend, SuckerPunch, Sony Santa Monica, insomniac and many more to solely just focus on single player concepts and allow those other teams to work on online titles.
Keep in mind, this thread is literally about "what are Sony's First Parties even doing", that includes all genres...
edit.
@historia lol yesssssssssssss even when I was typing that guessing at a 2027 release for GT8, I did think about a PS6 either already being out or about to release and it being cross gen or something lol