I want to emphasize this.
Another reason is signalling company growth and appealing to investors with promises of higher returns because obviously you wouldn't mass hire if you didn't have a lucrative product in the works.
That's exactly what everyone did 2020-2022 and the second the economy turned they all went, "oopsie, we overhired!" Turns out nobody actually had the money and demand to support all those workers, they were only posturing that they did so that the low interest funding kept coming to support their pet projects like the metaverse hoping to create the next Big Thing™. It's putting the cart before the horse. It's a ponzi scheme.
Now they're all buying as many AI resources as possible. Subscriptions are going unused (or overused), hardware is sitting in warehouses. Once again it's not because they have the money and demand for those tools, they're cutting off their own limbs ("oopsie, we need to be leaner!") to be able to afford it and then shoving it into every unsuspecting anus, because they need to continue posturing to speculative investors to gain further intangible business leverage versus actual operating power.
In Xbox's case since it's relevant, they admitted to over-acquiring. It looked as if they were going to dominate the industry once Sony forced their hand, but when they had to actually stand on their own merits they had nothing: Abysmal hardware sales and not enough game pass subscribers because they had so few exclusive games worth a damn. Managerial bloat, abuse of contract and foreign labor, and impossible or misguided demands made every acquisition dysfunctional.
