See, I'm not a console warrior, but I think it is obvious which company has more sheer financial power. If Microsofts aquisition of bethesda turns out to be not worth it, they will probably just shrug it off and go back to business. If sony would spend such an amount of money (which they could I think), they have to make sure that purchase will be worth it. That's the difference. Sony has to rely on "organic growth" unless they are willing to risk the entire company by buying a really expensive studio/publisher.
Btw: I like sonys approach more. Microsoft just shits money on whatever they think will help them and calls it a day. It's been like that since the OG xbox.
You’re not comparing like for like here.
MS is indeed cash rich and they need to invest that cash to make a return. MS doesn’t have 135bn cash - they have about 35bn cash (with 7.5 designated for zenimax) and the rest is in “short term” investments which are highly liquid - that’s to say they can convert to cash quickly. MS don’t keep cash on hand like that because they want to make a return on the money.
Gaming isn’t a core business for MS and it doesn’t seem to be profitable at the moment either - there’s a decent chance gaming is a loss for them while they’re investing in 2 new consoles and gamepass market growth.
For Sony, PS is their single largest source of revenues - it generates about the same as the next 2 largest revenue streams. So it is their core business and they’re more inclined to protect and invest in that sector.
Sony are serious about gaming because they can’t dip and out - they need to make it work.
So one should compare MS cash for a developing but as yet undeveloped market vs Sony looking at the market as a core business. We’ve seen a spotty strategy from MS when it comes to the game sector - that’s the benefit of lots of cash, they can dabble and pull out without too much trouble. It also means they’re not as committed to making it work as a colony fully invested is...
Sony and MS aren’t companies on the same scale. MS’s problem is if they want to spend big on gaming they need show investors that’s a better place for the money than other sectors like business software or cloud or whatever.
In my opinion MS can’t do that - gaming is not an ROI growth sector on the scale MS needs.
For that reason I believe gaming will always be a non core sector for MS but if they should go crazy and put yet more money into it they’ll need to start making the earnings (or indeed losses) clear or investors will get cold feet.