The reality is you don't have to have a Fortnite level success to make way, way, way more money than you would from a single player game.
Again, the majority of time people spend playing games is with live service games. The highest view counts on Twitch are almost always all live service games. The highest grossing games every month are all live service games. And these are all true even without counting the numbers from China, which would tilt things exponentially further.
If you honestly believe "nobody's asking for live service games" you fundamentally do not understand the current market. We're talking about billion dollar corporations. They have the numbers. There's a reason they keep trying.
Sony in particular's constant failures have more to do with abysmal management rather than market demands. Helldivers 2, a live service game, was their biggest release of the year until they mismanaged it into the dirt.