I wonder how much of it is mismanagement on behalf of Microsoft itself, and how much of it is small-time devs suddenly getting more budget than they’ve ever seen before and deciding to get super ambitious with their next project and then having to scale it back when they can’t actually handle the project?

It’s what happened with EA and Anthem. Bioware suddenly got a shitload of money, couldn’t hack it, had to scale back the project, and it all fell apart.