You're right, they've been hands off and basically done bare minimum for marketing and promotion. And it hasn't been working well for them at all, exhibit A: Halo Infinite, exhibit B: Redfall. Clearly they can't sustain this anymore.

Starfield has been probably the first example where they actually got invested in the production, delayed a game by a year, got their entire QA team test it. Layoffs from top to bottom at 343 is probably another example of them intervening.

Regarding exclusionary buyouts, I don't know if you aren't aware of it. But it has been a thing in this industry for decades. This is how Sony got where it is today, by being highly competitive by making exclusionary deals and buying studios with whom they had exclusionary deals with for years. Sony entered this industry out of nowhere and bought their way into success, and everyone agrees that only made the market more competitive. Xbox had no games and was not bringing competition in market, and now that it has more games, it's anti competitive?

The difference with MSFT is that they bring their games to PC (an open platform) via Steam, and to Xbox, along with a price accessible service of GamePass, so it doesn't force a gamer into first buying a $400 console and then a $70 game to play on it.

We can agree to disagree, my original point is primarily around lack of confidence in MSFT's ability to manage these studios and do justice to their legacy. Sure making workspaces less toxic and inclusive for everyone is a massive win, but will employees stick around under a new management that seems pretty incompetent to eff up their own flagship series (Halo).