Microsoft might be considerably larger than France. I think they can buy whatever the hell they want if they are really gung ho on getting it... 

Speaking of GungHo, they should buy SoftBank just so I can laugh at the idiots... 

Also, depending on how they handled Square, they could've fared nicely. The problem is that whenever for some bizarre reason MS decided to step in, they did more harm than good. When it came to good studios, they were often those MS gave free reign to do as they saw fit... 

Also, Final Fantasy being as big a name as Halo would've been monumental. 

Well, thankfully that didn't happen. The greedy banker saved us lol.

Sony nearly bought them aswell, after they nearly went bankrupt.

I wish they did. We could've seen more frequent releases

Yeah lol, EA is worth $5 Billion and Microsoft is worth $560 Billion haha. Microsoft doesn't need to buy EA outright either, they could purchase EA at $2.6 Billion and own 50% of the company. Of course they would probably pay more to have the transaction move faster. They could buy EA and Valve (worth $4 Billion), but Valve is a private company so they would need Gabe's approval first. Microsoft would also need shareholders approval from EA, but I can almost 100% guarantee they won't say no haha. 

Money-wise, Microsoft could buy Sony and Nintendo. In reality they cannot buy them because of legal issues and the fact that it would probably takes several decades to make that money back. The trick is to buy low, so Microsoft would want to wait until one of the companies start doing poorly before purchasing, but then they run the risk of another company picking them up before they do (along with lost value of course).

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/EA/

EA is in fact worth 38 billion dollars. Microsoft is worth 706 billion as well. Not sure where you get your numbers, but they aren't correct.

Holy crap did the Japanese video game industry dodge one hell of a bullet. Microsoft practically created a graveyard of developers they had purchased in their early days in the console business. Those who didn't die ended up on life support. Even though Rare seems to be pulling through somehow, I have a feeling that if Sea of Thieves were to flop, it would be the end for them.

It's also interesting that Isao Okawa wanted to do a collaboration deal with Microsoft. Interestingly enough, it sounds very much like the deal that Tom Kalinske wanted Sega to do with Sony several years earlier where they would both collaborate on hardware while splitting the costs. Even though the Microsoft deal didn't go through (though I kind of wish it had), it proves that even back in the day, Tom Kalinske had the right idea all along. Sega never had Nintendo's deep pockets. One bad console generation would be enough to leave them close to bankruptcy. A collaboration under the Sega branding would have led to lower cost risks while also eliminating a potential competitor.