I'm taking a short break from VGChartz, someone else will have to be the news poster temporarily.

Nah, not a chance. To get THQ they'd either have to buy the entirety of the Embracer Group ($10b+ USD only to have to try and manage Embracer's 77 studios plus the 22 Xbox and Bethesda Studios they already own) or convince Embracer to sell them just THQ and THQ's 19 studios, which is still just way too much to manage. 

At this point Xbox doesn't need a ton more studios, they have plenty of studios to manage already, with 22 studios (many of which are multi-team) they have enough studios to deliver a steady supply of exclusive content for Gamepass year round. At this point they need to be going for quality over quantity, what they need are big system seller exclusives, and THQ has nothing that is a true system seller, most of the biggest studios at Embracer are actually under Koch Media, not THQ Nordic, and even Koch doesn't have any true system sellers, their biggest IP is Metro, and the biggest studio owned by Embracer is Gearbox, and their biggest series, Borderlands, is published by Take-Two's 2K Games label. At $20b USD market cap, Take-Two can provide that system seller MS needs with Rockstar's GTA, and they would also be getting 2K Sports game for day one Gamepass (I doubt NBA and WWE would allow exclusivity, just like MLB stopped allowing it), plus Mafia, Bioshock, Bully, LA Noire, Red Dead, etc.

That being said, I doubt it is Take-Two, and I kind of hope it isn't. If MS spends $20b+ on Take-Two, that is it, they are done with acquisitions most likely after that. And I don't think Phil has the balls necessary to handle the extreme level of blowback that making GTA 6 Xbox console exclusive would bring about. I'd rather they not waste $20b+ only to pull another Minecraft and keep GTA on Playstation. Would rather see them acquire a smaller, cheaper publisher like Sega, Koei Tecmo, or Capcom, they badly need some JP studios and IP's. 

But I also doubt it's a JP publisher, my money is on either Paradox or Focus Entertainment (formerly Focus Home Interactive). They are worth $1.84b USD and $400m respectively in market cap currently, way way cheaper. We previously heard rumors that MS was interested in Paradox for improving their PC Gamepass offerings. 

Looking like MS might have closed another big gaming acquisition, most likely a publisher:

Klobrille posted this Gif from GTA:

There were already some rumors that Microsoft was working on a Take-Two acquisition. That matches on all fronts, it's big enough that it will cause online armchair lawyers to come out of the woodworks screaming "monopoly" like Skullzi suggested, it's big enough that it would leave Stein (Xbox's Social Media team manager) in awe after the meeting where the acquisition was announced to all internal employees, and it of course matches with Klobrille's GTA gif.