They can do both.
You buy the right studios and they'll pay for themselves in pretty short order.
I'm sure Insomniac has paid for themselves already.
Bungie will probably pay for itself with Destiny 3 alone, but who knows what else they have going on.
Witcher 4 would probably pay for CDPR, but expanding the property rights to Cyberpunk to other studios would also help pay for the purchase.
It's the companies that will never pay for themselves that you've got to worry about like Activision Blizzard. Not only are they 70 billion dollars but it'll be an expensive company to run. If COD ever dips (and it will), that is a hole you'll never climb out of.
It's why you don't really want to buy Square Enix. Capcom would probably be a better bet.
Personally, I think either Nintendo, or a western company like Microsoft acquiring Square Enix would do *loads* more for that company than they've done for themselves in the last ten years. Sony would let them do the same blasé shit they've been known to do during that time.
CDPR is amazing where they're at, studios fuck up, that's a given fact and if you say your *insert favorite game studio* hasn't fucked up you're lying bigly and even worse lying to yourself.
3/4 of the talent that made Bungie has left Bungie due to Activision, I see them doing well with Destiny but not beyond their 3rd entry. Unless they provide something that turns a genre on it's head they'll be par for the course and barely making enough to cover their corporate rent.
ActiBlizz under new management and leadership will do a hell of a job paying for itself and even pay for itself by utilization of competitive companies especially given the fact that Microsoft has been playing nicer with Nintendo than before.
Capcom is way too into the playing each field to want to be taken to pasture by any of the major pubs or console manus.
Only time will tell how we roll going forward, but honestly at this point Sony is making themselves out to look like dickholes like Microsoft did at the start of Xbone and it may hurt their options in the near future. Personally, after Smash on the Switch I don't really see a damn reason to own a console given that I can connect my PC up to my TV easily and game from it, piss on a closed source console when I have the entirety of history at my beck and call with a few keystrokes. Want to play a game from 35 years ago, quick google and easy set up. Wanna boot up emulators and enjoy (say a N64 game in a native-like environment) spend the $60 on the N64 switch controller and connect via bluetooth and voila. Want to play PS4 games on PC spend money on the premium and boom I've got access. Nothing is off the table and I'm only limited to where my imagination will take me (and let me guess you're gonna be all like well mah PEEPEESS5/XBOXSEX can do better than your comp, if it can not for more than a year dude and then I've got parts that are easily accessible that blow that out of the water).
Microsoft is making big brain moves knowing it can strictly stick to a walled garden, Sony is slowly getting there with their releases (and their earned versus spent is eating badly at their console business they have no choice but to make these decisions, this is both of these companies). Now we just need Nintendo to quit pretending to suck Disney's mighty morphin power phallus and join the pc accessibility revolution and we gamers will have the cream of the crop accessible no matter how you spin it.
