Consolidation is the only part about this that has any real value. Shrinking the industry isn't worth it 'for CoD on mah gamepass!'. Let Actard burn to the ground instead and the staff found new studios free of the terrible problems they were working under
I've never touched Call of Duty, and have played very few other Activision games, probably about five total in the past eight years or so where I've been independent and in control of my own money. I don't have much interest in their games coming to Gamepass or otherwise being available to me, besides Crash Bandicoot I suppose.
The way I see it, consolidation is probably inevitable with the current trajectory of
The Economy, whatever the hell that is. And if consolidation is going to happen, the Microsoft of now is probably the best entity to do it. They have diverse leadership that generally aren't bigots, they have enough income outside of games to lean on, their studios generally don't seem to have crunch issues outside of 343, and so on.
It's the Microsoft of a decade from now that I'm worried about. But thats a problem for 35-year-old me.