Sony acquired 4 companies while this whole thing was playing out...
A lot of fault lies with Jim "we believe in generations" Ryan being super aggressive with their backdoor deals keeping as many titles off Xbox as possible and fostering a toxic community of "Xbox has no games." Microsoft wasn't going to let all their Xbox investment go to waste.
Playstation has a very strong 1st party library and a huge install base carried over from their very successful PS4 run. They could have continued to dominate based on that alone, and instead chose to be hyper anti-competitive to kill competition which isn't unfamiliar territory for them. Lack of competition is what's really bad for consumers/gamers.
Not saying this acquisition is good. It's definitely not for me as a physical collector that believes in preservation. And this will only provoke the arms race of acquiring everyone on both sides. Probably the only winners in all this are indie devs which will have a lot of opportunities to make deals that help them make more creative, fun games than the AAA sequel-itis or remake/remaster-thons that have kept those games stagnant.
Sony acquired 4 companies while this whole thing was playing out…
Microsoft's valuation is $2.4 trillion. Sony Group's is $110 billion.
Also Sony has never pulled the kind of shit MS has done with Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Windows Media, I can go on. Neither are they acquiring Activision.
Monopolizing and destroying markets is in Microsoft's blood.