Wtf at the amount of people that thought this game would bomb. It was always gonna be a hit from the first time it was shown. Amazingly stylistic platformer. Wtf were people drinking?
Don't know what drink you would call the "Anti-Xbox" honestly... Maybe something that's "Anti-Mountain Dew" perhaps?
Regardless, if I had to take a guess, (and as I said on top the prior page), it probably was that because the game was being due "Exclusively" with Microsoft and for how long the production was on this game that plenty of crow eaters honestly thought that this game was going to be dead on arrival. Bare in mind that when was the game first announced? 2014. And since that time, you could argue that we didn't see much in terms of progress for the game and how it was usually around E3 or other events promoting the indies that we actually did see Cuphead. It got to a point where with what little that we heard, that usually would spell "disaster."
The awesome thing here though is that the reason why it took so long was not only because of how long it took to draw literally everything that we saw in-game, but they took the extra steps to make sure that there was more to the game than just having it be a "Boss Rush" (while making sure the platforming Run 'n Gun wasn't seen as a cheap cash in addition).
Add that in with how people love to say "Microsoft has no exclusives this year!" and how some people just want to see games fail for the sake of failing and you basically have your cocktail. I just so glad that the game had such a successful launch that it did and they took those extra steps to ensure that Cuphead's launch was a successful one.