A publishers job is to fund games.
Sony stans like to come up with these romanticized ideas of what sony is doing vs microsoft, but in reality as publishers their Job is the same.
Whether it’s a first party game or a 3rd party game. Their job is take a game pitch from a dev and decide if they feel that game is worth the investment.
Splitting hairs over exact contract details is just stan shyt so you can say “sony good, Microsoft Bad”
The biggest difference between sony and microsoft in the past is they when sony decided to fund a game they would negotiate ownership of the IP or studio. Microsoft did not stipulate ownership in their contracts in the past. Now they’ve changed that strategy to more in line with what sony has always done and they’ve decided to buy the studio for games they want to fund.
Ultimately, like i said they are both just doing what a publisher is supposed to do