Interesting, that could be true. But it doesn't fit in with what Microsoft is doing, since they've released recently 4 games on PS5 and 2 games on Switch.

Wonder if Microsoft could release a gaming architecture specification to be produced and marketed by anyone. Same market strategy as windows.

Could they do that successfully?

You lose out on "code to metal", when devs know the hardware they are working with and can optimise for it.
And instead, you'll then get a pc box, where each game, you'll have to toy around with settings in game, for the performance of the box you have.

MS wouldn't eat a loss on hardware, and these "others" wouldn't do it out of the kindness of their hearts.
So prices on said box's would go up by a good bit (ei. it would be more expensive than playstation, for the hardware thats inside).

You could then overshoot playstation, by selling a more powerfull pc box.... but again, price to buy, matters if you want to quickly build up a consumer base.

So yes, they could do it.
However it comes with downsides.

Redfall is dead.... porting it is a waste of money. Trying to fix it, is a waste of money.
I think sony and nintendo are more single player focused, and releaseing old halo and gears games wont do anything.
It'll just be prepping the nintendo/playstation side for more to come in future.
Let them enjoy playing through the saga's and get deep into the story (while the tv series is still free in peoples minds).
This is a new audience that can grow the IPs.

If they face xbox backlash, its as easy as saying "its only the old games, these release 10+ years ago" ect.

They could for sure.

However, what's the point for them? If they were to leave the console business, might as well just release them on PC to support their other business instead of bringing them over to Sony.

This fits exactly with what they are doing.  It's the principle of reciprocity.  Microsoft acts platform neutral and releases their games on other systems like Playstation.  That in turn encourages other publishers, like Sony, to act platform neutral.  The result is Sony releasing their games on PC.

Sony is releasing their games on PC for years now (never day 1 tho), there is nothing new about it so that's not a result of what MS is doing right now. What is new is that MS has released games on others consoles, that's new. Never happened before. The real question is : are they gonna do it again ? I think they will.

They already release almost everything on pc day 1 as well right?
So thats already done.

The thing is they have huge studios (activision-blizzard) that made alot of their profits from playstation.
Cutting out playstation doesnt make sense, spending 70$ bn, just to lose profits once you buy it (deminishing its value) makes little sense.
Plus they already agreed to keep certain titles on playstation for atleast 10+ years (which was needed to buy said big studio/publishers).

So the point? more profits, and needing it for some of their studios.
But why do it for everything?

Because they want to keep makeing big AAA titles, and seemingly don't think xbox alone can support that?
Hence the branching out to pc, putting things on the cloud ect.
plus, I honestly think some at MS would rather they just become a 3rd party publisher, and go for short term profits, instead of  trying to fight nintendo/playstation.

The thing is that the number of PC gamers has increased quite a lot since when Microsoft created their Xbox division.

While the latest numbers I could find in this regard are from 2021, they still show that Steam has 132 Million monthly active users and 69 Million daily active users, all while the number of concurrent Steam users now reached 36M in March. And unlike on consoles where each only has their own storefront, Steam ain't the only one on PC (though the largest one by some margin), so the actual number of players is even higher.

In other words, they wouldn't need to publish the games on Playstation if they do a good job of publishing on PC, as the userbase is bigger and continiously growing while the userbase on Playstation is stagnating at best.

Microsoft has their deals to release games on Playstation for 10+ years, as otherwise they wouldn't have been able to buy Activision Blizzard. But after that, they could and should concentrate on PC as their main platform. After all, wasn't Xbox created to promote PC gaming?

@bolded: Keep in mind that some of the biggest games on consoles actually started on home computers. Call of Duty, which is the biggest IP Microsoft bought from Activision, is one of those games. As is Diablo, the biggest IP from the Blizzard to even make the jump to consoles. Both could thrive very well without any console ports.

What was the point of buying all those studios if not to make exclusive content for Xbox?