I think Microsoft broke itself trying to buy Activision which collapsed the whole thing.
Microsoft has been wanting to get rid of Xbox for decades, but it was a small enough part of the company that they could just ignore it as long as Phil Spencer fought for it in board meetings.
But now that the Xbox division spent so much money, Microsoft is now taking charge. It's why every initiative Xbox has talked about is being aborted.
When they first started buying studios, I figured it was to rebuild their first party lineup after the previous management shut them all down. Xbox needed exclusives and they were buying their way back.
When they bought the makers of New Vegas, it made sense so that they could have their own competitor to Bethesda. But then they went ahead and bought Bethesda too....
They had no plan.
The only consistent result of mergers and acquisitions is layoffs. Supposedly Double Fine has an escape clause they can pull at any time, they probably have that since they got in early enough.
I believe it was Phil Spencer that said the PS4 and Xbox One generation “was the worst generation to lose, because everyone made their game libraries everywhere else.” With the PS4 taking the legacy Xbox userbase, any new unclaimed audience Xbox could have claimed went to Switch.
Gaming exploded in the pandemic, and Microsoft managed to miss just about all of it.
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