Comment by speeder

I don't think MS considered any of this. For example there were situations were they had a meeting giving green light one day, and cancelled the next.

Seemly what happened is that MS high-level decision makers, concluded that MS need a lot of cash for AI research, and decided to mass-close studios and cancel games with little verification, just go firing people until the cash liberated for AI is enough, doesn't matter if those people gave even greater revenue recently.