Sony, MS need to keep buying cause if not them then it ill be Tencent, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Embracer etc
i would much rather Sony & MS do the buying then the other terrible options
I laughed, but I used to feel the same way as you. Then I realized a duopoly or triopoly can be almost as bad as a monopoly.
Basically, I don't think a company like MS or Sony has the authority to dictate who can compete in the market as a major player. That's why it's a free market, after all. If Sony, Sega & Nintendo had that mentality back in the day, Microsoft would've been 100% shut out at every turn. If Nintendo & Sega had that mentality, Sony'd of been 100% shut out (and that almost actually happened).
Technically speaking those other options can build studios from the bottom-up and grow them from there, but it's on them to figure that out. They just don't want to deal with the time that'd take and the resources needed, and may or may not lack people good enough to guide that growth. Google certainly lacks it, as an example. All the same, I don't think using the fear of Amazon, Apple, Google etc. potentially entering as major players is good enough reason to want Microsoft, Sony etc. to buy up these massive publishers.
I'm a point now where if a major publisher did get purchased by a company not MS or Sony, and things go south, I'm kind of in the "so what?" camp. Plenty of devs and pubs have shut down in the past. Lots of great IP have been lost. I absolutely wouldn't want to see Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft to stop being platform holders, but I don't think they need to buy up massive publishers and consolidate the industry to avoid that fate, either.
Because it's been going on two years now, and we still haven't seen Apple make a serious gaming purchase, or not even Amazon. Google cucked out at the mere sight of MS buying Zenimax. And also keep in mind, what big pubs even want to really sell to companies like Google or Amazon, as they are right now? Embracer and Tencent are different; Embracer just focuses on b-tier companies and IP, Tencent just tries to buy majority shares. And actually, another company can buy out Tencent's shares.
But unlike MS, Sony, Google, Amazon, or Apple, Tencent & Embracer don't have a major gaming service or gaming hardware they would use their stuff for to push marketshare. They are 100% reliant on the market as it currently exists and aren't interested in disrupting the setup, because that disrupts their money. The only reason I'd somewhat want to keep Google, Amazon and Apple out is because if they're successful, they might push out one of the current Big 3.
That's assuming they actually make a successful product, though. And just buying up studios or publishers won't make that product successful whatsoever; you still need to know what to do with it.