Developer acquisition is often treated in forums as if it were a magical panacea. Well in the real world there is no such thing as a cure all. Let alone a drug that doesn't come with strings attached in the form of side effects. The truth is that developer acquisition is filled with its own downside. For every development studio that is purchased, and does well for the buyer. There are two or three that are miserable failures. Further more doing well doesn't necassarily mean it was a windfall purchase. You can spend years just waiting to make back what you spent upfront before you see any actual profit, and even then there is no guarantee that the profit will be great, or that the studio will keep being successful.
Sometimes when people discuss studios you get the impression that in their minds these studios are some form of mantra of a symbol. What gets lost is that these studios rise or fall on their employees which aren't neccessarily expendable. They are teams of highly skilled individuals that have free will. The studio they work for can be bought, but that doesn't mean that you instantly gain their loyalty, or their desire to stay working where they are. Without those employees you literally have nothing but a building.
Sony and Microsoft have two different mentalities. Sony prefers to buy the finished goods. Microsoft is wanting to create the finished goods. Basically Microsoft is establishing greater control over the risk at a lower price. This could actually work out fairly well. They aren't paying out the ass, and they are the ones in control of the talent pool. They do not have to basically buy and hope, and with it being strongly internal they can probably shift resources more quickly. This is basically what Nintendo does, and they rarely buy third party developers.
So in the end the question really isn't who do you feel does it better Microsoft or Sony. The real question is who do you feel does it better Nintendo or Sony. Microsoft hasn't quite polished off their product to Nintendo standards, but its going to be cheaper to make so they can spend that money on just buying the exclusives. Microsoft must see something in building up a large internal studio.
