There's a growing awareness that games that aren't great just don't sell. Gamers do a lot of research and demand the very best experiences for their money – they won't buy a mediocre game. Rushing a game out the door before it's polished isn't fair to the consumer or to the teams that make the games. But delaying a game to invest for quality can, at times, be just an excuse for bad planning. We all need to build in time for polish when we plan our games.

This isn't necessarily a new approach, but there is a clear recognition that new games (and great sequels) need time to develop properly. The games that we held back last year could have shipped, but doing that would have pissed off the consumer. And pissing off consumers is a very risky business proposition. You only get to do it once before they abandon the franchise. Rushing an incomplete game into the market is just bad business.