It wasn't written by him, it wasn't marketed by him, it was other people who did it conveniently thrown under a bus.
You can tell that from inception the game had this ugly tone and that was bought into by him. I've seen the same thing happen a million times in games. Ugliness is the easiest thing to build, from Thrill Kill to Kingpin, being vile is easy. Its ok to admit that and straight up say it was a mistake on his part to have followed through with it. When a multimillion dollar game gets going you don't want to change tracks.
Go search Bulletstorm trailers on Youtube and there is his smiling face honestly happy about what it is he is promoting and how he is promoting it. Marketing wouldn't have picked up on it if it wasn't there in the first place.
It is healthy to admit that you made the wrong decisions, and you know, he is right about Saints Row being the game it is, if its goal is sales and popularity exceeding GTA.
In his defense I still think Gears is well done. I think the chainsaw gun isn't some horribly out of place alpha offensive thing. It fits within the reality of the war torn violent world that game takes place in. You don't see Marcus and Dom trading high fives and talking about ass rape and breaking the tone. Writing wise, you can tell Marcus doesn't even want to be there or a part of it but has to. Gears is a wholly developed world where the parts reinforce each other. It never feels like it is trying hard to get a laugh, to shock via content, or change on a dime.
Bulletstorm is designed to gleefully reward you for doing shitty things to people and laugh about it. That is its core design philosophy.