Spolier: Do not put 'listening to leftists' as your answer, too easy.
With the paracite hangers on of game 'journalists' the first to go, the amount of bleakness from Ubisoft, EA trying to sell itself harder than a crackwhore, we are approaching a point where we may end up with only 3-5 major ones left and a few focused on one title that's been around for decades (eve online, your DOTA games etc).
Doesn't really affect us as I think I'm safe in saying we all have backlogs that can outlast us being on Earth! So why not make this a fun opportunity to go 'you know, if you did this , you wouldn't be begging for money'. Choose whichever companies you want on what you think was a missed opportunity:
EA: Not using their IPs together enough. Seriously how hard would it have been to make a Battlefield game set in the Command and Conquer Red Alert or Tiberium franchise or even do a sports game but in the backdrop of Mass effect. They seemed to be all about processing IPs than using them effectively.
Bethesda: not using an Id engine for Fallout 4. When I played Rage, the story was lackluster but the combat and gameplay was smooth, fun with fantastic visuals. Unless there was a hidden licensing reason, why not use THAT for Fallout 4, that seemed like the perfect engine .
Nintendo: making it too difficult to buy and play older titles so creating a piracy market.
Microsoft: not letting gamers be the one to design their military AR project as they could've probably told you the dumb parts quickly.
Sony: Not embracing Japanese game devs, not leveraging their monopoly on anime with PS+ by doing, for example, free first 3 episodes of a series on Crunchyroll if you have PS+. Also on Crunchyroll, just put an adults only section for uncensored anime, have it behind a paywall of some small fee and a SECOND password and you'll probably get a lot more subscribers.
There's more I could mention like Ubisoft, Rockstar, CD projekt etc but gone on too long and let this be a collective 'I would've done this' thread.
Listening to and hiring women.
They're all stuck looking over at Activision nervously, knowing any time, their fate will be the same, only without the Microsoft rescue deal. We already saw the leader of Activision's takedown trying to get a job at Epic, and suing for sexism when they rejected her.
EA : Just existing. Sell Codemasters, you feminist hacks.
Epic : Their biggest mistake was casting Brie Larson as The Paradigm. Nobody cares about the story now. Live events were what made the game special, but they're pointless now. You already know Paradigm has plot armor because of how much Larson paid to cling to relevance.
Microsoft : Putting Playground Games on the Fable reboot instead of making a better Forza Horizon expansion. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm guessing - firing the Rick and Morty guy. People inexplicably liked that crap game he made.
Anything that MS has touched has turned to shit in the gaming department. They fucked Rare, they ruined Halo and Gears of War, Fable at this point is fucking vaporware. They were the ones to introduce DLC, they were the ones that incentivized that developers patch their fucking games at a later date. Constant patching of their UI which always got worse.
Square-Enix from a beloved developer that made fantastical worlds that people loved to sink their time in, to adopting Western trends in video games that have alienated half their fucking fans, and are now a laughing stock. They only have managed to survive because of FFXIV and the good team that they have. Which they are now making FFXVI and might save them, but it could be too late since hype for that game is average.
EA/Ubisoft is pure trash, nothing redeemable about them, it's employees should all be fired and never hired again. The scummiest people in the world.
I don't think it's Microsoft's fault that Gears of War was trash. They didn't choose the insufferable female protagonist, The Coalition did. Halo could have been better, I haven't played the single player so I can't tell you whether that's woke or not, but the multiplayer was pretty average.
Playground lost all their team leads to some feminist hedge fund backed project. I'm concerned about Forza Horizon 6 being vaporware, it looks like they might try to use good thoughts and used gum to hold FH5 together for another year or more.
EA should stick to sports games and do a firesale of all the other dead IP they've got.