It very well could be a PR move to try and recover from that, though I doubt he was the main reason it happened. I think more than likely they're just switching figureheads and using the CEO swap as a scapegoat. I doubt they'll change direction as they're still making money.
How many of those million copies were sold before the launch (pre-orders)?
Also, the current game is not being sold on it's own merit. If we'd never heard of SimCity before this game would not have sold 1M copies. It's because the nostalgia that many people have had playing the different city games from the mid '90s that's carried the current game so far.
1 million is very good, but not record-breaking. 1 million is very, very good if you consider SimCity and city-building games somewhat niche compared to games like Battlefield.
