Stop announcing release dates until its 90% finished or all major bugs are fixed and you're just 3 months away from being ready.
Publishers are a problem too, they pressure to release games around the holidays, or the console manufacturers do cause it helps sell hardware around the holidays.
From what I gathered its mostly fine on PC, they're a PC shop after all, the console versions needed probably at least 6 months of work to be polished. People were screaming for it to be released no matter what or to stop making excuses no matter how much crunch the devs were already doing. If they released it as an "early-beta" like a lot of games or just said up front, okay we're releasing it but its not finished, so you can play it but you're getting the beta now and we'll be fixing it with updates. I think hardcore gamers would understand. It would just not look good for release sales and I'm not sure if the game media would care.
Publishers are a problem too, they pressure to release games around the holidays, or the console manufacturers do cause it helps sell hardware around the holidays.
From what I gathered its mostly fine on PC, they're a PC shop after all, the console versions needed probably at least 6 months of work to be polished. People were screaming for it to be released no matter what or to stop making excuses no matter how much crunch the devs were already doing. If they released it as an "early-beta" like a lot of games or just said up front, okay we're releasing it but its not finished, so you can play it but you're getting the beta now and we'll be fixing it with updates. I think hardcore gamers would understand. It would just not look good for release sales and I'm not sure if the game media would care.