IIRC, Microsoft paid 5 billion USD for Mojang several years ago now. They’ve added tons of mtx to bedrock (and neglected Java because it’s harder to monetize I guess)
Then there’s story mode and dungeons.
But 5 billion is/was a lot. Do you think they’ve brought in that much since taking over?
The Minecraft tax on Lego seems to be as much as 25%, so yeah, merch. George Lucas wrote the book on merchandising your franchise, and EVERYBODY has been copying it ever since.