I guess it all comes down to how much faith we're willing to give Microsoft. The current "administration" drove XBox to it's current point, and it's the worst year ever for XBox in terms of big exclusives. To me, that matters. I just care more about track record and evidence than most of you do here.
With that being said, I hope I'm wrong. I love the rest period that Microsoft is willing to give Halo and buying new studios certainly doesn't hurt their outlook but I've just never been impressed with how Microsoft handled their studios.
Time will tell, and again, I hope I'm wrong and you guys are right.
In terms of Sea of Thieves you're way off base. I know Andy isn't interested in multiplayer games at all so I can forgive his ignorance here. I'm not sure where your level of interest is regarding these types of games. If you read any of the reviews for Sea of Thieves you'll see that a lack of content was the single most common criticism of the game. The overwhelming impression people had of the game was "Great concept, but there's a major lack of content". If Rare had an additional year to work on Sea of Thieves, that criticism gets handled pretty soundly. I can't think of many games that would have benefitted more from a delay than Sea of Thieves. Microsoft should have handled it the way a Sony or Nintendo would have. That's the kind of thing Microsoft needs to do to turn things around.
Talk? Talk is cheap.