There's a lot of space between "buying nothing" and "buying the biggest game developer in the world" that Microsoft could have explored if they felt they needed to acquire more studios. You know, like when they bought Bethesda for $8 billion and had no trouble. But chose not to repeat that, and went for the throat instead.

There's only a handful of remaining game developers/publisher so systemically significant that a platform owner buying them should get serious antitrust scrutiny. (Activision, EA, Take Two, Ubisoft.)

The problem is that Microsoft performed so poorly in the last generation of game consoles, that it is critical that they find a way to compete during this one if they plan to stay in this space for the next generation.

Hardware wise the XBox Series X is as good or better than the PS5 on virtually all counts. Their library of games is a very different story. These acquisitions are crucial to their strategy.

I don’t want to see a Sony monopoly for next generation. Before you say Nintendo, they chose a different path long ago and don’t directly compete with Sony. They instead rely on handheld gaming and quirky, fun hardware with an extremely valuable line of first party exclusives (Mario and Zelda mostly).

> between "buying nothing" and "buying the biggest game developer in the world"

I wonder how much of that is because of IP and said IP's underperformance.