[kevingadd]

To be clear, you're saying to avoid rushing to your Launch (marketing, press, boxes on shelves, etc), right, not to avoid showing it to customers?

[Tycho]

Well that's what Realtime Worlds did, they showed the game, it got a lot of buzz, so they pushed its release date forward (or refrained from delaying to fix the bugs), released it, but it flopped. So yes it's the Launch bit they screwed up.

At first it struck me as contrary to the 'just get your version 1.0 out there no matter how embarrassing it is' wisdom, but I suppose on reflection it's not really.

[Ogre]

There's a saying in MMOs, "You can't patch first impressions". It is kind of contrary to "just get it out there", but maybe not if you consider press coverage rather than shipping "getting it out there".