The real disaster was XP. Windows 8 was a relatively straightforward push forward from where Windows 7 was at the time. It just didn't get that chance at a benefit of such doubt because the vast majority of (especially corporate) users weren't even trying to upgrade to Windows 8 from Windows 7, they were still trying to wrap their heads around upgrading out of Windows XP before Microsoft dropped an overly-generous run of decades of security updates.