2006 - 2013: Hey look! PS3 has free online! Xbox charges $60 for MP Gold. And the optional PS+ sub plan has tons of free PS3 and Vita games.
E3 2013: Jack Tretton announces PS4 requires PS+ to play MP. And over the years the number of free PS+ games has reduced.
(Dead silence)
This is kind of a false equivalence though, because these things didn't happen in a vacuum. Yes a lo of PS gamers during PS3 used "free PSN" as a bullet point against MS but it didn't stick much because even though MS were charging for online, they were ALSO providing games (including many exclusives and the best version of 3P titles) and ecosystem features that for the vast majority of 360 owners, justified the fact they were charging for online play. Or at the very least, made that reality much more tolerable and worth putting up with.
When Sony announced paid online for PS4, in a vacuum it seemed like a bad decision for more profit grabs, BUT people were looking at that in relation to not only what they had already revealed with PS4 (including its price) at that E3, but ALSO how badly Microsoft dropped the ball with their XBO reveal and rollout, confirming all of the restrictive features that had been rumors up to that point. Those things were easily worst than Sony charging online for PS Plus, especially considering they also positioned PS4 $100 cheaper than XBO while being more powerful. The "this is how you share games" video garnered them even more goodwill while exacerbating Microsoft's mistakes with XBO, acting as even more of a buffer to "get away" with charging for PS Plus and not getting too much kickback.
That's ultimately the difference between Sony and Microsoft when it comes to how they put out unsavory changes to their ecosystem: Sony knows how to butter their audience to minimize the pushback (through buffering bad stuff (i.e $50/yr for PS Plus, $10 increase on games) with a lot of good stuff (PS4 E3 presentation & pricing, PS5 September event with reveals for FF XVI, more 1P gameplay footage and reveals, opening up PS5 preorders). Microsoft...doesn't. They just don't, and I don't know how much of that is due to bad timing and how much is due to having people in upper management at the division who simply aren't in tune with the pulse of the hardcore/core gaming community.
Because it's the hardcore/core gamers who follow gaming news regularly that started pointing out the price increase to XBL Gold, they're the ones that eventually kept at it to where casuals and mainstream gamers and even non-gamers started to notice, and how the price increase started trending on social media for all the wrong reasons. If the upper brass at the Xbox division underestimated the ability of hardcore/core gamers to get that type of thing going as a concern among the larger mainstream, or underestimated the kickback from core members of their own community, then they paid a massive backlash because of it.
And simply reverting the decision and announcing F2P games will be paywall-free (in several months from now) is the absolute bare minimum they have to do in order to rebuild lost trust with swathes of the community, both their own and gamers outside of the community who may've become more apprehensive jumping in due to the negative attention from the proposed price increase to XBL Gold. There's even gamers now who are more alert to a potential increase (perhaps of similar degree) to GamePass and GamePass Ultimate, and it's not like Microsoft have done much to quell those increased worries.
Like I've been saying, they have a lot of work to do now to rebuild things to where they were before announcing the price hike. I don't think it's a terrible look that's done damage comparable to the DRM policies and such of XBO, but the point is it's a self-inflicted wound that never had to be made. And IMO, it shows a bit to what degree they may or may not care as intently about the Xbox brand compared to, say, Azure, Office or Windows, because they would never roll out price increases to the severity, suddenness, and brashness that they tried doing with Xbox Live Gold. That's just a fact, and the fact they did not do this with GamePass might also be a window into where their priorities lie with that compared to Xbox (as to say, they prioritize it higher).
I have faith Microsoft can do well and rebuild any lost trust; after all, Sony managed to do similar with PS3 and Nintendo eventually did with the Switch (after Wii U massively underperformed). But it'll mean that Microsoft has to care enough about the Xbox division to let them do what they need to do.