The old Tomb Raider started out good but limited by technology. It got popular and they milked it. If you play Anniversary you can see they remade the original game and were already starting to tweak it for modern times. Cinematic cut scenes, more emphasis on action, streamlined exploring, QTE's, etc. And this was before Uncharted. It's not as if Uncharted broke the mold for 3rd person shooter/action games.
I look at it like the old Resident Evil games. The archaic, limited controls possible back then kind of helped make the game what it was. With modern control schemes and better technology they had to shift away from that and starting with RE4 the franchise played way different and arguably better.
As for whether it's "wasted", how many copies was it going to sell if it released in September or October? Is it even ready to ship then? Is it worth losing the holiday sales to launch in 2016 closer to Uncharted? I think the game is different enough from Fallout that while they certainly compete for gamers dollars, there is enough of an audience that it won't matter when it was released. Furthermore we have no idea what the deal with MS includes.
