When I think Double Fine, Tim Schafer is one of the first things that pops to mind.
Then old games he did at Lucas Arts, like Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle,... and then their remakes resently.
After Lucas Arts, Im not sure how successfull Tim Schafer has been in terms of sales (ei. he makes great games, that dont do blockbuster level sales).

Stuff like Stacking, and Phychonauts, are made after Lucas Arts.
But like.... heres from the wiki of Phychonauts:

"Despite Psychonauts earning high critical praise and a number of awards, it was a commercial failure upon its initial release.^[53] Although the game was first cited as the primary contributing factor to a strong quarter immediately following its launch,^[54] a month later Majesco revised their fiscal year projections from a net profit of $18 million to a net loss of $18 million,^[55] and at the same time its CEO, Carl Yankowski, announced his immediate resignation.^[56] By the end of the year, the title had shipped fewer than 100,000 copies in North America, and Majesco announced its plans to withdraw from the "big budget console game marketplace"."

1st Phychonauts game shipped (not sold) less than 100k sales (back before digital), in the US, after a full year.
Even though it reviewed well enough, and critics liked it.

To this day, I think Grim Fandango is the best game, Tim Schafter has ever been apart of, and also the best selling.
Howmuch of that was due to Lucas Arts?

After Tim Schafer went on his own, alot of their games just barely broke even, and they had to sometimes rely on crowd sourceing to get games made.
They didn't sell gangbusters, or make huge profits.

But again, maybe thats not the point.
Tim Schafer makes quirky games, that stand out for their slight oddness, and art style.... usually with fresh ideas behinde them.

Still this was such a odd get for Xbox.
I honestly dont think, the xbox crowd was much into these sorts of games.
If not for xbox buying them, I dont think they would get much notice from the xbox crowd.

If with xbox fans behinde them, in a dry periode, they dont succede... thats not a great look.
Also Phychonauts, is more "main stream" than some of those other games they make.

Maybe with enough money behinde them, they can just change though to suit their target audience better?
Make bigger more main stream type games, and tone down the quirkiness levels? Undoubtably MS probably has some people overseeing them, and doing so.

Note: This game is also on PS4,PS5,PC as well.....  If in future it goes full exclusive to xbox, sales will be impacted.
(ei. I suspect this sells more on PS4/PS5, than XB1/XSS+X)

Grim Fandango is indeed the best of what he all has worked on. He has some great ideas but the games often feel clunky, Grim Fandango included (those controls were bad back then as well, still not very good in the remaster). The art style and dialog are great, execution is lacking and pacing is often a tad too slow.

It's also a shame it didn't get a ps5 version as I would have snapped that up with the console. Instead I got Life is strange: True colors (haven't played it yet, hope it's good).

I enjoyed Rhombus of Ruin a lot (the psvr game) but it's one of the lower scoring games of him. I backed Broken Age on Kickstarter, enjoyed the first part but never got around to playing the second part. Too much time in between.

He needs to pair up with a team that can deliver the game play. No need to tone down the quirkiness, but he does need to turn up the fun factor. Maybe a bit less exposition and a bit more story telling though game play.

That was what made old Lucas Art games so great.
They just "drew" you in naturally, with the story telling, usually from how odd the enviroment/world/characters ect was.

I think, the oppersite is needed though, less focus on gameplay (platforming/controlls/aiming ect) and go back to Graphic Adventure/point-n-click style games. Go deep on the story telling and odd worlds/scenes/enviroments, the exploation & puzzle solveing ect.

Its what worked, and what he did best.
Tim Schafer is a story teller (its what makes him great), going back on that, to focus on other things, is a step in the wrong direction.
I dont want to see him try to focus on gameplay, and make a platformer, equal to a Nintendo Mario game.
I think he will fail at it, its not his strong suit.

Also "pacing is often a tad too slow." thats kinda what I loved about Grim Fandango.
You go at your own pace, take your time to explore every crook and cranny, take the world in, while relaxing to the jazz music :)
(its also why I love exploration in RPGs/worldmaps, and adventure games... hell even in fallout (old ones) with the small hidden stuff you can encounter)