I gotta say, threads like this are massively stupid. Microsoft has a long history of hiring third parties to make titles for them. Even assuming that you actually know-know what the MS owned studios are working on, you still don't have a useful amount of information. That right there makes the actual OP of zero value whatsoever. Now, for what the thread actually is: backseat driving of Microsoft.
It's entirely possible that there is a single person on this site qualified to backseat drive a platform holder. But if that person exists, they have not presented themselves in this thread. So, maybe we can just stop pretending that internet forum posters are capable of having intelligent thoughts on what an impossibly big entity should do. There is just so much that is opaque that any takes, any thoughts that an amateur has are ill-informed by their very nature. The conditions under which the thoughts are had bares no relation to the actual world that the decisions are made in.
Right now we have three pages of people arguing over MS acquiring Playground Games, if that is a good idea or not, if they'll do it or not, blah blah blah. But no one here has even seen the Playground Games contracts. No one knows exactly how much control MS has. For all you know, PG is precluded from developing a racing title for any other publisher. You don't know if Playground Games is committed to develop, say, 3 more entries in the Horizon franchise. You do not have enough information to post intelligently.
And that's a massively simplified version of the pieces on the board. There are so many parts that one would need to have a deep understanding of to truly grasp any given situation. There is a reason that people who do this kind of thing professionally - analysts - are so very bad at their job.
How about we leave it to the pros? Threads like this mostly result in low effort concern trolling and little else. Nothing of value is created.
