Exactly. The problem is simple - CP came out a year too early. It needed a LOT more play-testing and refinement. Unfortunately few studios/published take a true "it's done when it's done" approach.
I'm not even sure why. Half-Life 2 was famously delayed by a ton and yet people don't really remember that - they just remember what a massive gaming milestone it was. The original release date was in September 2003 and it came out in October 2004 since it was so unfinished in 2003.
Stocks. Markets not liking it is the only reason to avoid delays (at least if your budget can support it, of course). Valve is privately owned and not publicly traded, isn't it?
Market is not really reacting positively to the current state of affairs either.
Remember this the next time someone tries to justify shareholder value theory as anything other than “that bad”.
Remember this one anecdote when someone suggests a theory has validity? That's hardly a sound intellectual framework to formulate one's model of the world with.
Empirical models need to be based in reality. Case studies have value.
Judgments on the validity of theories shouldn't be done based just case studies.
Well duh, that's a gamble. It works often enough so it is being tried again and again. It didn't work this time (or at least it seems so right now, we'll see how it turns out long-term though).
I'm not sure if it's a good gamble if you're at a point where you're not sending out console review codes just to prevent people from seeing what the game looks like.
At that point in time you're already way past taking that gamble.