I don’t pretend to know GP’s motives for putting it that way, but if I was going to put on my evil hat and kill off a gaming company/division I’d also put a woman in the hot seat. Not because I think women don’t understand gaming, they do; nor that I think women can’t run successful companies, they do; but because a large chunk of the gaming market is openly misogynistic and would root for the failure outcome I was orchestrating. Hell I’d even throw in some kind of golden parachute deal because that would enflame the trolls even more. People are easy to manipulate, and that’s quite possibly what’s happening here.
It's like the Ellen Pao era of Reddit. Ellen was a scapegoat put in by the board of directors to soften the impact while they rammed through a lot of unpopular decisions. Then they replaced her with the actual CEO.