Contrary to popular belief, Sony doesn't own Spider-Man, or at least, not all of it. It's a complicated web of legal jargon, but they only own movie rights. Outside of that, Sony (or anyone else, for that matter) has to pay Disney to use Spider-Man, which includes video games. Apparently, Marvel's Spider-Man, one of the best-selling modern video game properties, is costing Sony quite a bit of money.
According to one of the leaked slides from the recent Insomniac Games data breach, Sony spent a total of around $226 million to make, market, sell, and produce Marvel's Spider-Man, as of September 20, 2021. In return, the game had sold more than 21.6 million copies, netting the console manufacturer $793 million in sales. This leaves Sony with over $500 million in profit, which is great, until you realize that it has had to pay Marvel nearly $215 million in royalties for Marvel's Spider-Man alone at that point.
It's a large sum that makes it easier to understand why Sony is asking Insomniac Games to cut spending after costing a whopping $300 million to make Marvel's Spider-Man 2. Of course, while naysayers might argue that Sony took a poison pill by taking this deal from Disney, people don't understand just how big of a system sell Marvel's Spider-Man is and has been.