Do you think publishers just dump content onto the market as soon as they possibly can? Or do you think there's a strong element of strategy and planning involved in order to produce share-holder friendly results on an annual and quarterly basis?
If you accept the latter to be true, what do you think happens when any one party has control over so many significant properties that it becomes difficult to manage smoothly? And what do you think happens to serial under-performers under corporate ownership?
I certainly wouldn't call Activision or Zenimax 'serial underperformers'.
Xbox approach is to retain the acquired studio structure while providing more resources and support to remove blockers.
MS have only gotten to this point by burning billions of dollars in losses in order to stay in the game. Their track record is not good, which is why, two-decades-in, they are still spending huge in order to acquire IP and not expanding out from their home-grown successes.
Source on the 'billions of dollars in losses'?
Midway through last gen, they only had a few first party studios. Of course they'd have to spend big to beef up their first party studios to support their renewed focus on gaming. You say this as if it's somehow a bad thing to invest in expansion.
What it is in fact is a product of corporate ambition and protectionism funded by immense wealth generated outside of gaming.
You're joking if you don't know this describes every console maker. Including Sony.
Seriously. Why would you want a corporation with a track record like that to control all these huge, storied IP's?
...Because they're taking a semi-hands off approach, they'll fund these studios very well and the games from these IPs will show up on the excellent value subscription service they've set up?
You need to understand that what's being transacted aren't "games". It's purely IP's and assets. Which means that to the buyer, they can't really lose too much even if they run their new acquisition into the ground. Because they'll always own the IP and assets even when the staff and studio they purchased is long gone and scattered to the winds.
Nah, this is completely wrong. the talent is a huge part of the acquisition. And pre-purchase, there's always a game release forecast to run the economics. The games and the talent are pretty important. Doubly so in Microsoft's case, since they need a constant cadence of game releases for Gamepass. There's a reason why nearly every Xbox studio is hiring and expanding.