Take 2 buyout would be a waste imo. The only reason I could see MS wanting to buy them is if Sony is trying to moneyhatt GTA6 like with Starfield. Aside from that, a Take 2 acquisition would only give MS like 3 exclusives per gen if we're excluding spot titles.

SEGA would be the smarter choice right now because MS would be hitting “two birds with one stone” SEGA for Japan and SEGA Europe/West for PC and as you pointed out they would be way cheaper out all the options.

Of the big Western publishers Ubisoft would be the smarter choice because they have the most IP and they release a ton of AAA games that would be perfect for Gamepass. The problem there is the management and the fact that they have over more than twice the employees of EA and Take-Two, would MS really want to take 20k employees all at once?

One thing I wanna say is that I personally do believe that MS is likely working on big acquisitions some possibly ranging in the billions, they need to spend because of rising Inflation and they were willing to spend 40 billion on Tik-Tok and 10 billion on Discord.

It’s a buyers market right now and I feel like it is the perfect time to execute big moves that might not be possible in the future. I think that WB is just a matter of time and if MS does get them then they will be splitting the studios between XGS and Bethesda and not keep them as a subsidiary.

xbox Two Podcast

- Jez was told by Studio Heads that Microsoft isn't mandating anything about how their games are made.
- He has been really digging and can't find anything about Killer Instinct being in development.
- According to Jez, InXile has been rapidly growing their studio, he has heard that Cobalt could slip into 2024 and that the scope of Project Cobalt has increased a huge amount since Microsoft acquired them, he also mentioned that they're working with a lot of contractors and he believes that basically the entire studio is on Cobalt.
- He does know what Compulsion Games is working on now, when Rand said he is unsure on Compulsion, Jez essentially replied that he used to be like that until recently.
- He made a brief comment that Project Indus developers have been poaching developers from Civilisation.
- Mojang is working on a couple of Minecraft spinoffs.
- Xbox is working with a bunch of indie studios on smaller projects too.
- Commented about a Side-Scroller Beat-Em-Up being in development, a MOBA based on an existing IP.
- There's another Cloud native game separate from Kojima's project in development, an MMO-kinda thing he says.
- He hasn't heard anything on acquisitions, he doesn't think anyone else knows either unless it's extremely close to being announced, Jez has personally heard that Xbox has been talking to smaller studios again like the 2018-2019 batch but hasn't heard anything on large studios, he thinks some of these smaller studios could be announced in the next few months.
- He knows what Stein's tweet is about and it isn't about an acquisition.
- Basically said now is the best time ever to be an Xbox gamer, Xbox is funding and publishing a huge variety of titles, big and small, and trying to fill every genre niche.

I think smaller studios is the way to go. They have enough AAA studios now, they need stuff that fills in the gaps of big releases. Xbox should go for games that not only play well on console/PC but Xcloud too like side scrollers, top-down, turn-based, etc. Smaller studios are able to grow over time and become bigger if they want to.

After reading outside here, please buy something MS.

This person in question has been called out so many times on their weird ass inconsistencies and double standards. Just let it be man, I don't think anything could change their mind at this point.

It's best not to venture outside this thread for anything Xbox related. It's like going years back in time to read all the same nonsense.

I can never support Xbox as MS tried to fuck over the gamers in 2013. You remember always online? 

Yeah.. for me the only reason to ever own Xbox console was Scalebound. And that's what Microsoft always does, they just cancel games and force every studio to make GaaS shooters. There's no diversity, no Scalebound.