Honestly, Gearbox knew what it was doing. Pitchford knew what he was doing. Just like Duke, he knew he could take advantage of an old, respectable IP that has a game people have been waiting on and exploiting it. I call BS on Pitchford spending $10 million of his own dollars on it. If he did that, he'd have more vested interest in the game, know? Instead he put the game on the back-burner, outsourced it to unproven studios and took SEGA's money and fan support for a ride for 6 years.
Pitchford probably doesn't believe the bullshit coming out of his mouth. He KNOWS what he did, he just hates that everyone knows it too! It's not some conspiracy theory, a lot of it's based on facts given by SEGA and former Gearbox employees how this went down. But Pitchford can't let the customer win. His ego will not allow it.