While I’m not strictly arguing with your points here, I do feel like a lot of this thread is ignoring a lot of Japanese gaming companies, especially Sony, who have been playing the same game as microsoft, just on a smaller scale. Squeenix have also been obsessively chasing live service games, making dozens and then shutting them all down, most of them surviving 3 years or less. Meanwhile konami shut down their gaming development entirely (unless you onclude gambling games) not that long ago and have had 3rd party devs (like bloober team for silent hill 2) making anything involving their properties so they can back out anytime they want.