Yep, they would have come to Xbox, at $50-70 a pop. Now they will all be on GamePass. A win for Xbox users.

No, I will not abstain. 

Maketable secruties is different than cash at hands, esp. for acquisitions like Microsoft did. It is fine if you want to talk business and numbers, but just because you are using some fancy words you probably googled does not make anything real. Sony is a public company so they are reporting numbers (using financial statements, etc), good for you to understand that (not sure why you even posted the acronyms). Does not really change what the data they are reporting means... 

I asked you to post source that Sony have the cash in hands to do the aqcuisition and you just keep coming with " bla bla bla" but no actual data other than "yes they do". 

And as far marketable securities, this USUALLY can be transformed into cash faster than other means but:

1 -  That's not cash in hands, since we are talking about that from the start... I wonder if you even understand what it means.

1 - They NEVER sell for whatever values that is written, sometime close but usually lower anyway

So no, again, NO Sony does not have anything close to 50b in cash. Simple as that, they are most likely closer to 18b-20b 

And just to add to the actual point of Sony being able to acquire, if they go this way and they need more than 10b/20b, they will simply borrow to the banks... Sony has almost no debts at this point (you can refer to your financial statements to see that :)), and if they need to acquire something, they will very likely go this route anyway. Not having the cash in hands, does not mean that Sony does not have the power to acquire something more substential btw.

"lol"! 

Well if we apply the same logic than we can only conclude that the deal wasn't to remove IP from the competition as exclusivity deal would also have cost only a small fraction of the acquisition.

Take market share (by removing IP from the competition). Financial don't make sense otherwise. Exclusivity deal cost more because you need to pay for the lost of sales on the competing platform + pay for the gamepass loss of revenues (for the game company). 

It does make sense Financially, else Sony wouldn't be doing it all the time. If the goal was only to remove IP from the competition Microsoft would also go the timed exclusive / full exclusive deal route, it would be far cheaper this way. That's what they did during the first half of the 360 life.

No business thinks like that... Nobody is doing anything to "remove" marketshare from someone else. (well... at least successful business do not).

Everything is always forward thinking and aimed to grow THEIR own marketshare.

Obviously, the side effect of that is that the competition will most likely lose some marketshare but at the root, the idea/goal is to grow your own business.
When Microsoft is buying Bethesda/Activision, they do not care about the impact (or the extend of it) of removing this from the other plastic box out there, they care about how much value it will bring to their own offering and how this will make GamePass and their platform more attractive to customers, which is in return grow their gaming business.

I understand that those 2 are very similar :) But at the heart, it is quite different imo, and it drives several decisions a bit differently.

I really don't think this will hurt Sony nearly as much as some are making it out to be. COD: Warzone will still be supported on PS and that makes more revenue than the mainline CoD games. We still don't know exactly what will be exclusive or not going forward. With Bethesda it was easier to predict since they predominantly make single player games. MS may take a different approach with Activision.
For those saying, this ruins the competition, I think it's the opposite. This will actually make Xbox competitive with PS. Xbox is still getting their ass kicked by PS. Not nearly as bad as last gen, but still losing. As long as Sony keeps making the games they make and doing what they're best at, they'll be fine.

Activision was looking for a buyer one way or the other. I would rather it be MS than Tencent, Google, or FB.

Yeah, Warzone is the battle royale. I can’t even imagine how much they rake in with microtransactions. 

You hit the nail in the head. The bolded part is especially true in Europe, I don't think it's good for consumers that Playstation is de facto console amongst more casual gamers. They buy Playstation without even knowing what Xbox is or what kind of games & service it has to offer. If Xbox was more competitive many would choose it for better value and games for their liking. And Sony would have to up their game.

does remind me of Apple in the US