This is all too common in my experience, "oh we could just use an arduino/pi and a hat and a peripheral" rather than "Design a system that does <x>". As an EE who spent their primary career programming (horrors I know) and in systems analysis, I see it as the logical extreme of "why use a 555 when I can program an ATTiny to be a timer and do other stuff too!"

The allure of having one be able to add features "with just a bit of code" is catnip to product managers. They seriously cannot seem to resist going there.