Their successes are Halo, Forza, KI while so many others are just sitting in a storage closet. They overpaid for Activision-Blizzard both of which were being mismanaged before the acquisition. I hope Bethesda can get out of their slump—Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Doom are all potential huge money makers. Do they own Heretic and Hexen?
A few comments on Xbox Game Studios here:
You forgot
Gears of War, which is a fantastic IP. I was completely surprised by how excellent
Gears of War 4 was, and it was the first major Unreal Engine 4 title on the market. It felt like classic
Gears (in a good way), showed The Coalition could make a proper
Gears of War title, was Unreal Technology leading for it's time, and launched the fantastic Xbox Play Anywhere program (Something Sony and Nintendo still have no answer to).
Gears 5 is another fantastic technical accomplishment with great gameplay and open world elements added in, shows they could further the franchise in their own direction, and the "Hivebusters" DLC is a fantastic take on
Gears as well. Digital Foundry not only praised the game from a tech standpoint, but stated the cinematics are up there in quality with the likes of Naughty Dog. They also praised how fantastic the PC ports of both titles are; and how it's a console to PC game done right.
Gears Tactics is a fantastic strategy game that really works in the setting. Very reminiscent of
XCOM, it's the kind of experience that's lacking on other consoles.
For Activision-Blizzard, that remains to be seen. Blizzard Entertainment is still a huge money maker, inspite of the issues the studio has faced. Both
Overwatch 2,
Diablo IV, and
World of Warcraft are still raking it in.
Call of Duty is, of course, the big title, and in 10 years, Microsoft can pull that from PlayStation if they so choose. Assuming the IP keeps going as it has, that'll be huge.
DOOM: Eternal is fantastic; modern id Software doesn't make bad games at this point.
Fallout and
The Elder Scrolls have been focused on their MMO titles, and this was a thing before the aquisition. Here's hoping
The Elder Scrolls VI will be solid.
Not sure who owns the rights to the
Heretic and
Hexen franchies, though I'd love to see another title. Digital Foundry has been asking for this as well.
The thing about Xbox Game Studio's first party titles is they often release in a state very similar to
Mortal Kombat 1: unpolished and having needed more dev time. Once they do get polished up though, they're games are fantastic with exceptional gameplay loops and extremely high replay value.
Halo: Infinite is an excellent example of this. Interestingly, The Coalition is the exception, releasing highly polished games from launch.
Personally, I think Valve would be a poor parent company, while in comparison, I think Xbox Game Studios would be an excellent one. They are the only other company out there with a proper western fighting game under their belt.