X-Wing
Member
Sony has an entire studio dedicated to third-party support, XDev. Beyond that, there are studios helping with outside projects (like Guerrilla with Death Stranding). And also the ICE team trying to make some gains for first-party studios, even if they are running custom engines. It seems to work well. I'm not saying MS should follow the same pattern, but perhaps instead of just mere studio acquisitions, something like that would be more sustainable in the long run.
(not commenting on the Actibliz deal, I really don't care about COD or whatever the shell of Blizzard has to offer these days)
When Microsoft itself works mostly with contractors it gets difficult for them to support third party developers.