Lots of acquisitions of companies in the same industry of the acquirer (ie. horizontal integration) all done by a single giant company, especially with the goal of consolidating games with the most popular and largest amount of users, is most definitely anti-competitive behaviour.

So:

> Is the old hyper competitive, destroy the competition at any cost Microsoft back, in the form of Xbox?

Yes. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish never left Microsoft. They have just gotten cleverer and smarter at hiding it.

> I thought we were being led to believe it was a new Microsoft, kinder, more platform agnostic.

Microsoft has learned their mistakes with Windows Phone, Almost shutting down Xbox and now targeting, buying out the ecosystem of developers and gamers.

> What happens if Microsoft "wins", by using its money to own all the most popular game publishers - then there's only one gaming console left? How is that good for gamers? Where's the competition? Why would Microsoft bother releasing another Xbox console after that?

This is why regulators are investigating the acquisition [0] [1] in both the US and the UK.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/microsoft-slash-activision-bliz...

[1] https://nypost.com/2022/01/18/microsofts-69b-activision-bliz...