You are Bill Gates, one of the richest man in the world, head of Microsoft and beloved human beeing for your donations to poor people. Despite all of that you can't help but be unsatisfied by the Xbox division because you want them to succeed so you decide to spend some bilions to buy a Major IP (if it doesn't sell enough on Xbox, it will certainly sell well on PC, am I rite ?), so you get all three of the owners of the IPs you're interested in to accept the same ammount of money but of course you can't buy all three, you can only pick one:

Option 1: Super Mario, you only get the 2D Mario team (NOTE: you CAN do 3D Mario and Mario Kart games, you simply need other teams to work on it because you were only given the 2D Mario team alongside the IP...);

Option 2: GTA, no development team, you have to start the next game from scratch;

Option 3: Call of Duty, you only get Infinity Ward as a development team;

Which one do you pick and why ?

I am?

edit: Call of Duty, because that's already broken. We all know MS' history... :P

GTA, because it would work to inmensly bolster both the XBox brand against Playstation and the Windows 10 store against Steam. The other two wouldn't work well on the same context. And Microsoft has the resources to get a GTA-like game done from scratch. They are just too cheap to use them sometimes.

Just curious, why infinity ward instead of treyarch?
Gta is the best option because microsoft has the resources to make them. This would be a game changer. Xbox will be relevant again in Europe, and windows 10 store will be taken more setiously.

Super Mario of course! The 2D Mario team is pretty much the biggest asset of Nintendo, with Tezuka and Miyamoto. 3D Mario and New Super Mario are whole different matters, even as Tezuka and Miyamoto are the guys behind them too (except the original NSMB on DS).

Infinity Ward is the downside to Option 3, if you want Call of Duty to stay relevant you'll be forced to make new teams that can make better CoD games, same goes with GTA which has a larger appeal but needs a far larger development team AND longer development times. Mario is the evergreen pick, you need multiple teams for it because single games don't sell as much but cumulatively they make a lot of money, moreover they are cheaper to make and need far smaller development teams

CoD would be a waste. Most of the people who want it that badly already have Xbox.

Mario would be a good steal, and would definitely appease the PC crowd.

GTA would be the most lucrative, though.

Mario, the internet would blow the fuck up.

With those restrictions GTA is the only choice. Mario 2D is not going to do amazing, and Call of Duty is starting to fade. GTA can only get better, and if you have that IP the best developers/Programers are going to want to be part of your team.

I would grab GTA, hire a robust team of industry vetrans, and VR specialists. Then I would set out and make GTA VR, because that is going to be the biggest game of all time, whenever it finally happens.GTA in VR is damn near the ultimate gaming experience.

GTA

But as far as I know, 2D Mario Team doesn't only develop for Mario..