I think this reasoning is valid for single studios purchases, but for moves like Zenimax the MS board should be ok outside GP growth projections, because it’s an inorganic growth.
Its almost like a win-win for them. For example, either they gain a shit-ton of GP Subs with games like Starfield or they gain more hardware users with the Series consoles because of people actually buying the game.
GP is like Amazon used to be. They never reported profits for years because they kept reinvesting all of it into building AWS + retail and now they report many billions $ of profit/quarter. I believe GP is already break even at worst right now.
I was thinking about this earlier with all the acquisition rumours. They can’t just keep putting everything under Matt Booty (I know Bethesda don’t but it was already a lot).
They may need to consider some other arrangement with 4 or 5 people managing a group of studios and reporting in to Phil.