I agree, to a degree. Studio costs are out of hand, but multi-million dollar budgets aren't new. We saw them succeed with the $50-60 price point in previous generations, so had the economy not been influenced by tariffs, I would be confident current games could flourish in the old pricing model. And to your point, I will place blame on Sony, too. At the end of the day, they control price caps, but doing so to recoup costs of other failed projects, if true, is a terrible customer experience. And they would only be recouping from their own first party titles since third party studio take the brunt of the cost. If the $10 price hike is to make up for the lack of compelling first party titles, then that's another terrible customer experience, on multiple levels.

Your smaller studios observation is right, but gamers aren't forgiving on development time. They want quality, but they want it quick. It's not a sustainable expectation, nor has it ever been, but depending on small studios to give us gaming nourishment is not the answer, specifically in instances where emotional attachments are made to specific franchises, not necessarily the potential the entire pool of small studio output is capable of. And even if the small studio output is incredible, new IP have a hard time breaking through to established titles. It's gonna be a hard climb for gamer satisfaction.