What a stupid thing to say..
Fuck Sony.
Sony has the money. They could replicate a GP equivalent if they wanted to with plenty of cash to spare.
Their PS gaming division makes something like $3-4B profit per year. And that's after all the sub plan downplaying they said, even though they got sub plans themselves.
They just dont want to spend any of that profit back for better sub plan services with better games. Not only does GP have first party games, but also much better recent game selection. Sony can ante up and get some better third party support.
Sony's claim about sub plans dumbing down quality is unknown. If anything, it improves the quality because someone did a recap one time comparing PS Now vs GP metacritic ratings and GP games were higher quality by a good 10 pts.
What Sony also doesn't factor into is sub plans are choice. No third party company is forced to do it. Most games arent even on sub plan either. And aside from first party games, most games that come to GP are games that already did their 12 months selling before hitting the service.