They might care more so now, since they are buying Activision out. Whatever rights Activision has, that's now Microsoft's.

But, that still might not be the be-all, end-all here.

Now it's down to whatever nonsense is still left for older titles - i.e. anyone holding licenses, distribution rights owners, engine owners, and God knows what other mess any other parties own and need to be involved to get stuff down.

SpikedWall's post surely gives us a lot of insight on this mess - https://www.gog.com/forum/general/who_owns_the_earlier_mechwarrior_games_and_what_are_the_chances_they_come_to_gog_and_steam/post16

If Microsoft can lock-down all of the rights, they will do something. This will be a goldmine to print money and/or Remaster, if they can get all the rights in one place for the old games...which has been the problem forever w/ this entire franchise.

It wouldn't also surprise me to see more Remasters and whatnot, given how well Halo MCC did. I wouldn't be surprised to see MCC-like Collection Remasters like say of the entire Fable and Gears of War franchise - especially since some of these ain't on PC (i.e. Fable 2 Complete's missing on PC; and so is Gears 2,3,and Judgment on PC).

And certainly, Microsoft did Remaster older stuff like Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, and Halo MCC - remasters and/or remakes of MechWarrior stuff would be like a license to print money basically here on PC.

Also, if Microsoft needs to - they could always just probably re-release and/or re-master old Heavy Gear games (which Activision holds) and make a sequel to those, if any MechWarrior rights need to be settled on first...or if it's too difficult to still sort the MechWarrior mess out w/ older titles.

Nothing Microsoft has done in the past twenty years ever since MechWarrior 4's release indicates to me that they give a damn about the series. No remaster/rerelease of the games they published, no new game in the series, not even a freaking spotlight during the release of Battletech/MechWarrior 5. No, I'm not convinced that the acquisition will suddenly change Microsoft's mind.

Activision is one of the most notorious for doing nothing w/ IP's that are old and often do not remaster, re-release and/or re-make old games - look at all of the Heavy Gear, Heretic/Hexen, Pitfall, Prototype, Arcanum, and/or other stuff they're sitting on.

Microsoft buying Activision solves one problem w/ these rights, but it still doesn't solve any of the other problems that SpikedWall mentioned. That's still TONS of paperwork, agreements, money, handshakes, approvals, and whatever else that would have to be done or ALL of these companies for M$ to buy-out, just to solve the entire MechWarrior problem.

B/t this and NOLF series, since so many hands are involved w/ IP rights, distribution rights, etc etc - yeah, a lot of this could be more trouble than it's worth to Microsoft. There's so much leg-work to be done, that if say one holder says "No", it's lights out - similar to the problem w/ GoldenEye Remaster when Nintendo changed their mind on it at the last minute.

But, of course - the NOLF and MechWarrior situation's WAY more complicated than say GoldenEye.

EDIT - Again, if Microsoft wants to do some kind of Mech-style game b/c the MechWarrior situation is such a mess, they could just easily do a Heavy Game b/c only Activision owns that and they bought Activision, so they can start there easily w/ doing remasters and/or sequels to those.