Cox touts all this "listening to fan feedback and criticisms" and "totally inspired by the good old games" but I honestly think that's just just PR marketing buzz words. I saw his lips flapping, but all I heard was diarrhea coming out. He's a marketing guy, so I guess you have to expect that sort of thing? There is an old truth, sadly, that if someone says loud enough, a lie to the public time and time again, it will become truth to the public. The same tactic is being used here.
Either way, let's examine the criticism part;
What MS 'heard':
- Herp, derp, not enough exploration elements
What is reality:
- No more Titans
- Get a new composer
- Stop the Lord of the Rings generalizations, bring back Castlevania style enemies
- Fix the flawed combat balance, long combos are useless, enemies have inflated HP
- Die chupacabra! Die!
- The story was nonsensical / poorly written
I've heard the exploration complaint, but by so few a minority it was barely a concern. The fact that you could revisit stages was pretty well an acceptable compromise to everyone. That's where the concerns they heard ended. I've heard crazy amounts more of the other complaints.
At this point Cox and Alvarez have so many dollars stuck in their ears they can't hear, or care to hear, the true concerns of the game. Or perhaps the only criticism they looked at was Zero Punctuation? They've completely ignored the true issues pointed out, as well as went on to say they will be continuing the same design process for these next two titles.
On the flip side, they claim LoS was the best selling Castlevania release in the franchise's history. So, do they really care what the old Castlevania fans think? Should they care? By alienating the hardcore fans, they made profit hand over fist. This is what Konami wanted, a more profitable Castlevania. Who cares about the old fans, now that we have 4 times the amount of new fans?
Profitability versus fan appeasing is a very touchy issue. I feel that most people see them as having abandoned the old fans, tipping this balance quite in the opposite direction they expected.