This is just my own take, but I feel like at least part of the reason they went back to releasing new versions is because of the recent resurgence of macOS. Not only do Macs have the excitement of Apple Silicon, but they have annual “new” OS releases; even if not much has changed, it creates excitement with their fanbase. I think Microsoft realized that it’s not very exciting to just be on Windows 10 forever. So we got Windows 11.