Here is my theory:
MS was like: OK! We have it all figured out! We are going into a completely new direction with Crackdown. Think "Sea of Thieves in the city" Scrap the campaign, go all out on multiplayer and cosmetics. People love that stuff. There is no way this can fail!
After Sea of Thieves came out: Hey, how about we delay this for a bit and think about this whole thing again.
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”
- George Orwell, ‘1984’
