I think it is funny when people bring up "afford" as if there was a true budget here.
It doesn't really work like that.
Can they find a financer willing to give them the appropriate rates and schedule in order to ensure their long-term future is solvent? The question is what can they afford not to buy?
If SIE's revenue/market share were to decrease, the ability to pay off its liabilities becomes much more difficult. Sony has always benefited from SIE, but they've never really doubled down on it. You see way larger acquisitions in other divisions (these divisions don't really have the R&D cost of SIE). It would not surprise me to see them take the gloves off and make a purchase of Take2 or several other publishers.
Take2, CDPR, Capcom, Kadokawa/FromSoftware, and maybe even Square Enix with smaller purchases of Kojima Productions, Ember Labs, Clap Hanz, being options as well.
It'll never be cheaper to buy companies than it is today and content will only become more expensive.
So there is little reason to wait on these purchases.
That being said you need to make sure you get return on your investment with these purchases. You aren't going to get anywhere close to ROI on purchases of companies like Ubi Soft. You just won't. The best thing for Ubi Soft to do is merge with another medium size publisher, reduce overhead, and focus on making quality titles.
Recall that Square Enix bought Eidos for like 121 million dollars and the Tomb Raider reboot probably paid for that purchase entirely. That's easy and quick ROI. Sony bought Insomniac for 229 million and Miles Morales has probably already paid for that purchase.
When you get into the billions though, it becomes more difficult to get that return. Microsoft will NEVER see a return on Activision. Just zero chance. I'll eat crow if I'm wrong, but I see this absolutely blowing up in their faces.
Square Enix has turned their merger around and turned it into a success despite my belief that their games suck now. Eidos played a large part in that.
Sega Sammy on the other hand has been a terrible merger. Bandai Namco has been a huge success.
We all hate Konami, but their company's market cap is at all time highs. A Konami, Ubi Soft merger probably makes some sense, with Konami managing. EA buying Ubi Soft or merging with Ubi Soft makes sense as well.