The way I think others are thinking about it is that to Activision, making innovative new franchises or long term investments in general is a big risk since they are 100% a games company. Whereas if Microsoft owns them may face less pressure to cut costs/long term investments since it would make up a much smaller part of Microsoft's financials.

Whether that is how things usually turn out in practice with these sorts of acquisitions is a question I don't have a good answer to.

I just don't think I've seen evidence from MS that they foster that sort of thing, either? Have they shown that they can do a new franchise?

Or is the idea that MS would just dump a lot of money on them? Do they have a track record of that?