There is alot of disingenuous talk around this topic.
Firstly, MS never said that Zenimax games would be multiplatform. Not only did they not say that, but they honoured the existing deals with Sony having exclusive content even when they could have reneged and paid out the damages to Sony for doing it.
Same goes for games that were being developed by the other studios MS purchased such as Double Fine and Psychonauts 2, InXile and Wastelands, Obsidian and The Outer Worlds for instance.
The reasoning behind why people thought that MS may keep Starfield on PS5 was because they believed that MS wouldn't leave the extra income from PS sales on the table. It was wishful thinking more than anything.
The talk around how Sony wasn't buying Publishers so Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to ether is again ignorant. People forgot that they actually have bought a publisher in Psygonois historically, and were one of the parties actively looking at buying Warner Bros when they initially were looking at selling.
The only reason Sony hasn't bought a Publisher if the size of Zenimax or ABK is because they don't have the finances to do it.
They would if they could.
We then have Lulu revealing how Jim Ryan didn't want to do a deal, and rather than people being honest and saying "oh, ok, that's pretty silly of him to say that" they go into full defence moda and say she is the problem for letting people know that Sony was not looking at just securing COD, but rather trying to block the sale outright.
For the record, I don't know if it will go through. I don't think there is any reason for it not to go through, and I don't think that MS should have to keel COD on PS5 if they don't want to either.
I really don't care if it does go through, because as an Xbox gamer it doesn't give me any additional exclusive content.
Give me studios like Certain Affinity, IO, Avalanche, Asobo, etc any day of the week.