well, they're making a shortcut to produce in-house content like Nintendo and Sony does.
Instead of discovering talented studios, (more or less) carefully curate and support them until the eventual point of acquisition (like Sony does IMO), or focusing on finding talented individuals to scale your in-house R&D (like Nintendo does IMO), Microsoft's strategy is to buy entire machines which create games proven to be commercially successful.
The downside to this is that those large studios Microsoft buys are currently complementing the in-house portfolio of all console-makers.
If those studios at one point stop serving all platforms for some strategic reasons of their parent company, many of the games they offer today might not be economic anymore and would end up not being developed.
I wonder how such a move would impact the variety of games available today...
Instead of discovering talented studios, (more or less) carefully curate and support them until the eventual point of acquisition (like Sony does IMO), or focusing on finding talented individuals to scale your in-house R&D (like Nintendo does IMO), Microsoft's strategy is to buy entire machines which create games proven to be commercially successful.
The downside to this is that those large studios Microsoft buys are currently complementing the in-house portfolio of all console-makers.
If those studios at one point stop serving all platforms for some strategic reasons of their parent company, many of the games they offer today might not be economic anymore and would end up not being developed.
I wonder how such a move would impact the variety of games available today...