I didn't think Microsoft would try to cash cow the division, but I ignored that they are not a global brand. I thought MS would be very aggressive-- tons of deals in the vein of Titanfall.
To be fair, at first, they showed a lot of signs of aggressiveness. EA deals with Titanfall, Peggle, PvZ timed-exclusivity, and on the marketing side, they tried to win the football audience by having partnership with PGS, the Madden deal, etc.
However, my guess is that :
a. Those deals eventually prove to have poor ROI that instead reduced their margins due to how expensive those deals would realistically be
b. Resources that were supposed to be allocated for deals was reassigned to trade marketing deals to maximise short-term sales (bundling, free game deals, etc)
c. Deals they assumed would cost "X dollars" is now "X + 20-50% more" because the competitor lead is so much more than previously assumed that they have to make up for lost sales more than they're comfortable to pay for.
All of the above leads to one thing and another.