It also misses the further context in the questioning where Phil clarifies that it is more about Mobile growth and that they may leave the industry entirely if they can't grow significantly in Mobile and PC (coincidentally the two things they're trying to claim they're only acquiring ABK for to get regulators off their ass about Cloud and Console).

It also misses even further context that this was in response to questioning from the FTC's lawyer so everything should be taken with a massive grain of salt because it's in Microsoft's best interest to pretend like they're a dying puppy to the FTC and make exaggerated claims such as the above that if they can't get ABK then they're doomed.

Just like Jim Ryan saying PlayStation would be doomed without ABK. It was nonsense, with or without ABK, they aren't leaving, they just want to pretend like they are for the purposes of getting ABK. And now it's irrelevant because they have ABK

Forza in early October and then a big Game Pass dump in mid-October with Diablo IV and others.

Apparently Take-Two has turned down Embracer Group's sale offer on Gearbox. Take-Two doesn't want them, Xbox is locked up on ABK still for the next several weeks and may not want to rock the boat by announcing any new acquisitions for at least several months afterward. Embracer Group is so screwed, I doubt anybody else will offer them anywhere near the overvalued $1.3b Embracer paid for them.

They should sell Crystal Dynamics and Eidos to Xbox in a few months instead, far better grabs for Xbox than Gearbox, especially since both are currently assisting on 1st party games, Crystal on Perfect Dark and Eidos on Fable. 

Definitely. Especially before Embracer does further damage to CD and Eidos

They also come with IP's that are actually worth acquiring. With Gearbox, their biggest IP is Borderlands, which Take-Two already has partial ownership of, so Xbox wouldn't be getting any exclusive or even multiplat but day one Gamepass Borderlands games from the deal, so the only IP they would get would be Duke Nukem (dead and pretty much unrevivable without losing it's identity as a franchise, because even in 2011 people found Duke offensive, and they'd find him even more offensive now in the 2020's), Brothers in Arms (dead, was never particularly popular to begin with, as the biggest game in the series only sold like 2m copies), Homeworld (fairly niche RTS series), and Battleborn (dead and flopped the first time around).

Crystal and Eidos, in addition to already assisting on Xbox 1st party games, come with two relevant, fairly popular IP's in Tomb Raider and Deus Ex, as well as dormant but possibly revivable IP's Thief and Legacy of Kain. They're just a much better fit for Xbox.  

Homeworld would be pretty cool. I'm looking forward to Homeworld 3 releasing early next year, but, it's a PC only franchise, and Gearbox doesn't develop it. They've been licensing and publishing the franchise out to Blackbird Interactive, who also worked on the remastered collection of the first 2 games. So that doesn't offer much to Xbox's plans. Not to mention, it would be a VEEEEERY hard franchise to port to console. 

To think, Embracer paid $1.4 billion for essentially a one-trick pony studio and only paid $330 million for Crystal and Eidos along with 2 very notable IPs in Tomb Raider and Deus Ex. 

I honestly don't see any logical sense in Embracer selling Crystal Dynamics.

They have dozens of studios they could sell but they'd sell the one which is being funded by two of the biggest companies on the planet? (Microsoft and Amazon) Honestly what is Embracer doing other than collecting money? Lol.

Eidos is probably more unsafe if Deus Ex is self-published.