I tend to agree with
@Nesh here. And the issue is it didn't need to be this way. You seem very into this deal to "help underdog MS compete".
But taking away entire publishers from other platforms isn't competing as no one else can replicate such a thing.
You talk about how Sony is "high end console market leader"(which again is such a weird distinction no matter who tries to use it, even Activision blizzard) but they got that way investing into studios continusly and gradually over many decades.
Their failure in the PS3 generation only made them invest even more in building up the devs they worked with and owned into what they are right now. They put in the the work.
Something MS could have been doing and I wanted them to keep doing in the 360 era when they basically dropped Japanese investment into new properties and new IP in general, and started relying on nothing but third parties and 2 or 3 franchises they owned to do all the heavy lifting for years. Among other silly pet ventures like Kinect.
Which leads to the unfortunate end result. MS is in the situation they are in due to their own actions. Nothing anyone else did. Sony just exploited MSs failure to capitalize on their own momentum after 360 leveled the playing field after Sony's previous failure. And the way Sony did that was simply do what they always did better.
The idea that MSs response to that is not to build up their first party studios gradually and take a hard look at what their failure at 343 and coalition really meant, but simply buy up all the publishers in the wider market to cover their losses in a rapid timescale is ridiculous and they should absolutely be called out for that.
Nothing is stopping MS from competing in the games investment space with Sony, except them not wanting to put in the time and the work anymore.
Gamepass as a service is a good first step to competing on their own merits and it in turn forced Sony to come up with a similar subscription service which gives users choice. That is competition.
Buying entire publishers isn't competition, because it doesn't benefit anyone but MS to have this type of monopoly on the gaming industry when they are a platform holder.
You talk about weird hypotheticals like Sony buying up tens of development houses in a year being similar to this, but in the actual reality we live in there is no situation where they could possibly do such a thing, so it's not even a valid comparison to make.
They have only bought around 18 to 20 individual dev studios in almost 30 years (some of which don't exist anymore) whereas MS wants to buy a publisher that by itself owns roughly half the dev teams Sony has bought over all that time which all count toward games being made by a third party that PlayStation and Nintendo get by default due to being independent. Like I said it's not even a real comparison.
