That makes sense but wouldn't you want the most customers possible? There's probably a golden ratio where working/expending any more resources doesn't yield a sufficient enough increase in profit to justify improving a product/service, but I can't imagine Sony is anywhere near that. Can a company really just be this complacent and incompetent? Seems like an abdication of responsibility to their shareholders.
I'm serious, a monkey could run a better gaming division than Sony is.
I think you're probably right, at least in certain aspects. They probably indirectly collude by signalling certain ideas, sometimes industry trends seem manufactured, like the price hikes you mentioned.