My point is Nintendo didn’t have the luxury of unfathomable wealth backing there machine they had to back there creative exploits to the hilt to get where they are, the ideology that buying your way into that position just doesn’t sit right with me.
Maybe Microsoft/Xbox should concentrate on there own studios and how to better manage and extract top quality IP from them as opposed to looking at other studios and trying to buy them out.
But Microsoft IS focusing on their own studios and extracting quality IP's (and services) from them. What are you on about? Nintendo is surviving on IP's they've been running for decades - not that there's a problem with that - and the Switch is a very family friendly console hybrid..
Plus, them buying studios and publishers is simply a play from Sony's playbook - just upgraded. You speak as if Sony had the finances that Microsoft had, they wouldn't do the same thing. We both know that isn't true. Sony only rocks 3rd party deals as that's pretty much the most they can afford. Of course they've bought a few studios but, that's been their M.O. since the beginning.
Microsoft can't buy anyone who doesn't WANT TO BE BOUGHT OUT. These aren't hostile takeovers here. Not one acquisition has been hostile.
At the end of the day, it wasn't sustainable for Microsoft to continue to keep trying to acquire 3rd party deals when they weren't going to get the same deals Sony received due to Sony being the dominant player in the game. Even Kotick tried to strong arm Microsoft with the CoD deal because Sony had a stranglehold on the industry. It only made feasible sense to simply purchase the dev or publisher who was open to being bought out. That way they didn't have to miss out on marquee titles that weren't going to see the light of day on Xbox for years - if ever.