I am only surprised by the fact that people are surprised.
As a corporate entity, Microsoft has no conscience. Every single performance review is equivalent to the sword of Damocles hovering in the sky. Understand, too, that a moderate success is often equivalent to failure when the context is budget share and return expectations. That is the reality of belonging to a multi-trillion dollar company.
"Good" can easily be "not good enough."
That aside, the cycle of corporate cannibalization is well established in the gaming world at this point and will continue to be the norm. Smaller companies will continue to attract the attention of larger companies, who will carve them up like a Sunday turkey while they pick out the juicy bits and fling the rest into the disposal. Promising IP will continue to be mismanaged or pushed aside and forgotten as the people who made them special to begin with leave to form new companies with new IP and begin the cycle once more.
But, hey, the next time is going to be different, right?
