I still remember when they acquired Rare, most of their acquisition didn't bore any fruits, and Perfect Dark didn't turn out good. As for their new consoles I don't see many people that cares anymore for the new Halo, and last I heard Gears is a shadow of it's formal self. Fable has sold less with each release with 2 and 3 being bad games with technical problems like framerate drops, bugs, etc.
I think people are being a bit Fabulously Optimistic and letting their imagination run a bit wild about what might be, but it's usually a similar Song & Dance with Microsoft. At the beginning of a new console generation they usually either go on a purchasing spree or secure a high amount of Exclusivity agreements, but they kind of stop caring and at the end of it they usually end up with so few titles that people are still genuinely enthusiastic about that they have to do the same thing over again. I don't know if people still remember that FASA, Bungie, Digital Anvil, Ensemble, Rare, Lionhead, Twisted Pixel etc. were such acquisitions, or that Microsoft was big in RTS games on PC once, although it has been an uncharacteristic amount of game studio acquisitions for them this time around.
Aside from that people should remember that all "Xbox Game Studios" are beholden to a kind of corporate fancy that some higher-up Executive "thinks might be the new thing". This has manifested in temporary occurrences like the "Second Screen" gaming craze or the TVTVTV compilations of earlier last decade, but it can basically be anything. They could suddenly decide that playing games on "Smart watches" is the future for Microsoft or that Coprophilia is the Hot new thing (since gamers like consuming shit so much anyway), or get engrossed in some late trend like "Cloud gaming" or "Game Subscription Services" or whatever and go all-in without their Subsidiaries getting much say in the matter or thought about the long-term consequences of a strategic move.
For the people that wanted Bethesda or specific Bethesda Studios to die or become even more irrelevant, this might be good news. For people that still kind of enjoyed some of Zenimax's latest Output the Sky's The Limit as to what is to come after the release of the current titles they're working on in the coming decade. Zenimax at the end of the day was a gaming company that made money and stayed afloat by producing and selling games (whether you liked them or not), while Microsoft ultimately doesn't need "Gaming" to stay profitable or relevant. They could as much decide it's a diversion from their core business and divest of it entirely in a strategic corporate restructuring 3 years from now.
