Big dumb corporation doing big dumb corporation stuff. It's so big it can't behave coherently anymore. But it's also so big that it acts like a black hole that sucks all the money towards itself regardless of how stupid, unproductive and wasteful it is being.
Also screw long term profitability, make the graph quickly go up by firing people to get your bonus, by the time it comes back to really bite the company in the ass, you will have golden-parachuted away already.
I like how people assume they bought them to make games instead of buying them to eliminate the competition.
They know, they just don't give a shit beyond short term gains.
I think some portions of the company do want to buy these studios to make games. Mostly because they need a regular funnel of titles to put on Game Pass, and the best way to do that is small- to mid-budget games that can generate hype. But then other portions of the company want to chase that big AAA paycheck because big numbers look good, even if ROI isn't as good for that one game versus 3 or 4 smaller titles. And others still only care about what will make the balance sheet look the best for the quarter.
Even smaller companies end up with various "factions" within the org as far as vision and how to best create success (or even how to define success); a company like Microsoft is so fractured that different divisions are unaware of each other's goals and have competing interests.
I'm not trying to defend Microsoft here, I just think this is a consequence of an overly large organization that doesn't have unified goals.
Microsoft being Microsoft
Except most of the devs that made hifinleft the studio already.