What if the game launches and you find out everyone is saying it is incomplete, doesn’t run properly, and is crashing their consoles over and over?

That would be the practical reason I would think of for not just outright purchasing something that hasn’t come out

Sometimes empires fall. It doesn’t mean it’s for the worse https://youtu.be/A17oUv0E-N4

Microsoft made Flight Simulator before they made Windows, so I’m sure they must have cared about games more during that time period.

They can sometimes be obtuse, but otherwise mostly acute