Huh, I'm not too sure. I think you could potentially link lack of content and story to Bioware's developers themselves, in fact I think that's very likely. Unless by "upper management" you mean the people on top of the development chain. But if you're saying that the technical team developing Bioware's games are technically proficient, and that those people should be kept, then I'd agree I suppose. 

As far as your Tomb Raider example, while I completely see your point and agree with it, what Square Enix did was even more fucked up then the average publisher. Square Enix had a huge management problem, some of their Japanese games were in development hell, and as a result they decided to "blame" their Western studios. What I mean is that for that fiscal year they relied WAYYYY too heavily on their Western divisions to pick up the slack. So despite the fact that Hitman Absolution sold 3.6 million in 5 months (making it the fastest selling Hitman by far), despite the fact that Tomb Raider sold exceptionally well, and despite the fact that Sleeping Dogs did great for a new IP ... they still fell short of their expectations by $100 million+. That's somewhat similalr to what you're talking about, how publishers want to inflate their expectations and make an unreasonable amount on their IPs, but I think it's even more fucked up in this case because it was basically just to excuse their poor management and it ended up leaving a huge friction with their Western studios (Hitman studio eventually left Square Enix's control because SE fucked them over with a bullshit marketing scheme that ruined their potential to find mainstream success, the studio developing Deus Ex had their Western Final Fantasy game cancelled and ended up having Mankind Divided again fucked over by SE, the studio SE contracted to help make Sleeping Dogs shut down). That same fiscal year, Square Enix's 2nd biggest money maker Dragon Quest, ended up having it's worst debut in series history ... a debut that was so bad compared to the franchises regular debuts that I don't even think the fact that it was a subscription based MMO could have made it nearly as profitable as they were expecting. The only other games they had that year were Bravely Default (which sold very well but was Japan exclusive until much later, making it's potential for turning back their fiscal year very limited), Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance (which I believe only had it's Western release in that fiscal year, essentially halving the sales profit that was contributed for that fiscal year), and a Final Fantasy spin off which only had it's Western release contribute to that year (and even then the Western releases only sold 300k lifetime, let alone what it must have sold that fiscal year). The West was carrying Square RIDICULOUSLY hard and they were expecting too much. 

I agree with what you're saying overall. We shouldn't expect every game to sell 8+ million. The funny thing is that I would not be surprised if EA actually made a profit on all of Bioware's recent games, even the ones that were panned and didn't sell a lot. I would guess that at least Andromeda cost them a lot given it's advertisement push, huge development time, as well as the fact that it was mostly sold at a discount, but who knows. I think what EA really needs to do, is scale back on the staff of Bioware. Yeah, it sucks, but I think they need to be scaled down and really work on a quality singleplayer game for 3-5 years. They're currently at somewhere between 500-1000 employees, and that's simply too much for a company that is consistently in dire straits. I think going for something smaller and more manageable, and making their releases big in quality but not huge in investment amount would carry them a long way. 

Less than 10 hours for a completionist run on an open-world game, and reviewed well this generation? Go ahead, name plenty of games please, I'm curious.

talking about employee numbers 500 -1000 is a big spread even at the top end  those numbers don't sound that bad, I mean look how many staff bungie have for Destiny and Anthem is Bioware's Destiny plus they have a portfolio of games under the Bioware label.

By management I mean upper management at Bioware and those involved in a decision making capacity  from EA ,  people like the director etc who decide on the content and what and how much  storyline the game will have. I no longer plan to purchase the game I did it with Destiny and that's enough , but from what I hear is it's a good game in need of content rather than a buggy mess, talking about employee numbers 500 -1000 is a big spread even at the top end  those numbers don't sound that bad, I mean look how many staff bungie have for Destiny and Anthem is Bioware's Destiny plus they have a portfolio of games under the Bioware label.

Who cares what genre the game is. 13+ hours is still a average lenght of a game. Games come in  all shapes and sizes. We are not talking about a 3 to 4 hour game here. A 13 hour campaign with multiple options to run through again with Multiplayer player modes to me is a average lenght for a game.Weather its a openworld or a chess game makes no difference.