I am excited. I still hate Gates and Ballmer, I used to hate Microsoft. I still love Linux and open source. I admire and respect Satya Nadella and Phil Spencer so much so that I now admire and respect Microsoft and Xbox. I can't wait to be able play all the games of Activision-Blizzard on Game Pass for free.

This statement is mostly false. Ensemble Studios as well as Lionhead Studios were indeed closed by Microsoft. The other studios you mentioned as well as many others that Microsoft purchased are alive and flourishing and continue to develop games. Studios such as Arkane, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, InXile, and Double Fine have avoided the danger of closing down due to the lack of income after they were purchased by Microsoft. They are flourishing and growing as well and continue to make games.

You can call a lot of executives as soulless. I doubt you can say that about Satya Nadella. Please look him up and read his book. Maybe it is his culture, religion, or upbringing that allows him to have compassion for people.

By its very nature, a corporation is soulless but please refrain from lumping every single person who works in a soulless corporation as soulless.

The only acquisition that was killed during the Satya Nadella era was Mixer. Microsoft invested heavily in the company paying millions to streamers and influencers such as Ninja and Shroud and they never grew significantly even during the pandemic, despite being given independence and autonomy, aside from boatloads of money. In the end, it was their toxic work environment which MS frowned upon, plus their lack of growth that ultimately did them in. Every other company that was purchased from the beginning of Nadella's tenure as CEO, has flourished and grown, with complete independence and autonomy while still relying on Microsoft's resources.

The current output of Microsoft is to release two games a year. I think eventually they would like to release around 8 a year or 2 per quarter. For 2020, there were 250 PS4 games released that were noteworthy enough to be given a Metacritic score. In 2019, that number was 262. Right now, Microsoft's output is only 0.8% of the regular output of AA/AAA PS4 games. In the future, when Bethesda, Activision-Blizzard, and all of its game studios are churning out exclusives on a regular basis, their output could become 6.4% of the games regulary released on the Playstation platform. Can that be considered a monopoly? Does buying studios and releasing games prevent other platforms from releasing more games?

Microsoft offered to have all their exclusive games run natively on Sony and Nintendo platforms if they would allow Game Pass on their consoles. They obviously said no. Microsoft's end goal is not to be a monopoly on console hardware. They in fact wouldn't mind if Xbox hardware goes away so long as Game Pass thrives. Game Pass is essentially their platform now.

It would be impossible for Microsoft to be a monopoly in video games. In the future Xbox would like a release schedule of 2 games a quarter or 8 a year. For a publisher, that's a lot. Each publisher would like to release one or two games every year. The larger publishers can release two a year. Indie game publishers can do more. There were a 114 PS4 games released in 2021 that were noteworthy enough to receive a Metacritic score. 8 vs 114. Is that a monopoly? Future Xbox exclusive games would only be 7% of the current AA/AAA output of the Playstation. Right now, it's so much lesser.

If you RTFA, under Satya Nadella, Microsoft has been making it a point not to infect, with its own culture, the culture of the companies that it acquires.

Mojang was the first acquisition of Satya Nadella and his decision not to touch its culture, to not mess with the magic of what made Minecraft great, proved to be very successful and it served as a template for other acquisitions such as Linkedin, Nadella's second acquisition, and six game studios that were later acquired by Xbox Game Studios under Phil Spencer. This hands-off treatment of acquired companies has been the guiding principle for Phil Spencer (now head of Xbox overall) and Matt Booty (formerly Minecraft games business leader and now head of Xbox Game Studios) in giving their new game studios free reign in developing games with minimal meddling from Microsoft.

Their eventual shift of Minecraft to Azure from AWS may have been a practical as well as a financial decision, solely, by Mojang. Aside from the obvious discount that they get using Azure, they may have priority support from Azure, if not outright being given a dedicated cloud team that focuses on Minecraft.