This is ridiculous hyperbole. Phil and Co. absolutely did a solid job turning the brand around after Mattrick nearly put it in an early grave.
Nobody gives a fuck about the brand.
Let's summarize this "absolutely solid job" into bullet points
1) removal of Kinect
2) introduction of Xbox 360 BC
3) bought Minecraft
4) ended and closed Lionhead, Press Play, Function Studios, Good Science, LXP, SOTA
5) loss of long-standing exclusive partnerships with Epic Games and Remedy
6) failed / soured exlusivity experiments with Respawn, Insomniac, Crystal Dynamics, Platinum
7) renamed Black Tusk to Coalition and told them fuck ideas, make Gears
8) announced Sporkio
9) announced that every 1st party Xbox game will also be on PC
Forgot anything?
And that's pretending "Phil" wasn't around before. In fact he absolutely was around when Bungie wanted out, when Bioware lost interest in making exclusives, when Bizarre was made redundant to Microsoft's plans, when former XBLA heroes like John Blow and Phil Fish were declared enemies of the state, when FASA was closed after a glorious GAAS arena shooter based on an RPG license of all things and so on and so forth.
Over the past decade MGS has done nothing but liquidate assets and burn bridges. They are now coasting along on the fumes of Xbox 360 fan goodwill but they have neither the capacity nor the strategy to deliver anything competitive going forward. BC is absolutely the smartest thing they could have done, given the reality of their current production pipeline.