When it comes down to very simple microcontrollers with only a few pins, the package costs starts to dominate. Consider that each pin on an IC costs a few cents

When it comes down to very simple microcontrollers with only a few pins, the package costs starts to dominate. Consider that each pin on an IC costs a few cents. If a small pincount MCU is replaced with a 555, some discrete logic, and passives for each of those ICs, it certainly can be more expensive to have discrete logic as opposed to an MCU, not to mention the higher cost from increase in PCB size for the extra components.