Yes. And if they hadn't announced so quickly (early January iirc, about a month after GT6 was released) they were shutting down the GT5 servers, all the while in the middle of a whole lot of network issues on GT6 often rendering nigh unplayable online, they might not have lost as many players to other franchises and platforms. I recall a lot of series suffering huge turnout losses in moving to GT6 with those issues, that ended up going to iracing, etc never to return. Had they been able to continue to host on GT5 until GT6 was reliable, I believe many would have continued playing GT5 rather than jump ship. However, in their hasty and arrogant move to push more to adopt GT6 right away, they shut down the GT5 servers with the conceited notion that those players would not look elsewhere. They had the data from players counts online to see that the player migration to the new game wasn't on par with forecasts, and figured they would 'help it along' with a heavy hand.
A heavy hand that sent people right out the door. Their monopoly on quality road racing games was over, and their security over feared competition with iracing due to the barriers that exist between console and PC gaming was dwindling as access and proliferation of PC gaming continued to grow. And their king of offline play status was no longer as relevant in a world where online gaming ruled, making or breaking games. They forgot all of that and took their playerbase for granted.
Gamers, and sim racers in particular, are like drug addicts. Once they're hooked, they're not going to take a month or two off until you get your 🤬 together. If you take a month 'off' because your servers are 🤬 they will look elsewhere. And when that lands them going back to the previous game...and you take that away...they're really going to look elsewhere.
Then there's me who took years 'off,' came back, and feel on the precipice of another long hiatus. So maybe we're not all addicts.