That point surfaced quite a bit when news of MS passing on Spider-man was unearthed in the FTC Trial. They certainly didn't have an
internal studio with open-world action-game experience, that's true. If they really thought getting a Spider-man game in the pipeline was top priority, they did have an established relationship with Ruffian (Crackdown 2, Master Chief Collection). Microsoft could have made it happen if they really wanted to.
As a man who loved the old Spider-man cartoons as a kid, and excitedly watched the first two Raimi flicks opening night in theaters, I'm still glad they didn't go that route. Now adding in the absolutely brutal financials behind the contract, it was a no-brainer to skip the opportunity and invest instead in their own IP.
The Spider-man titles are popular games, but unless the contract is renegotiated, it appears that Sony has to delist both of them around 2035. Imagine sinking $115,000,000 into Spider-man 1 and $315,000,000 into Spider-man 2, knowing you get 50% of your usual cut at best (you also give up 50% of hardware bundle sales), and knowing you won't have the rights to sell either of them in ten years. Absolutely mind-boggling.
I should have worded that a bit better. Yes, Redfall was a critical and commercial flop, but as
@wshowers said, basically all of Arkane's games, whether developed in Lyon or Austin, have been commercial flops. That's what's got me wondering if the MS bean-counters are seeing if they can "encourage" Arkane into making more commercially viable games.
Arkane isn't my favorite developer, and I haven't liked all of their games. Still, they are one of the final Immersive Sim developers, and they bring great value to the Microsoft first party on the virtue of a diversified portfolio. Hopefully the higher-ups can see that, rather than solely going by whether Arkane can make four games a generation that are easy to advertise.