To be fair, he said they do things like this for their partners so that they have exposure. More or less, it sounds like they are doing this to get some free advertising from MSFT.
He says...
What is the reason? Why are we doing this? We need the support of partners to make our game visible worldwide. This should hopefully translate to better sales, which will in consequence allow us to do what we have been doing for the last 10 years, i.e. reinvest this money to make more great RPGs, while still sticking to our values.
Which is essentially saying that they need the exposure to sustain the company as is.