True, it would have been better to make the game character more siimlar to this beautiful actress. Seeing the result in the game, I thought they were using one of these other actresses instead:
The AAA teams now are in the thousands, not in the hundreds. Diablo IV has almost 9000 people on its game credits, and Starfield almost 4000.
And yes, AAA take more years and people to be made, because they require way more work to be down now than in previous generations, or specially when compared to the N64 days.
Games are way longer, way more complex, way more full featured and way more detailed. That requires way more work to be done.
This isn't the first or second round of layoffs. Redfall and its team got axed some rounds before, around a year ago. Meaning they were one of the weakest options they had back then. Back then they didn't shut down Perfect Dark and its team, which means they consider more promising Perfect Dark and its team than Redfall and its team.
A few layoff and closures rounds later, MS wanted to reduce this week their development costs in X millions, and to do so fired a certain amount of people, shutting down some teams and projects, choosing the weakest choices they had available now.