They had had microsoft people helping them, including helping to code. Who knows what sort of other help they got from MS? An average developer may not get that help, which might make the difference between doing well or not.
The article states that the people merely worked at MS. It's a big company, we the reader have no idea which product group they work in or if it's even related to WP7. I feel like the content of your comment is misleading.
As was pointed out to me a couple weeks back, the plural of anecdote is not data. And this one isn't even a plural.