[dom96]

It is a good quote, but does it apply as much in this day and age? There is at least one game that sucked at launch and now seems to be generally accepted to be good after months of work post-launch (I'm thinking of No Man's Sky, but maybe Cyberpunk 2077 is another one).

[beezlebroxxxxxx]

The quote still applies to NMS, or CP2007, because they failed to live up to the hype on release and that really left a stain on their legacy. It's fair to rejoinder that, well the games are pretty great now; but I think Gabe's meaning is really about how, from a business perspective, your product does not live up to its potential and this can have longtail business consequences.

In a way, studios have hyper-focused on pre-ordering in order to get around this. Games are now investments that eventually get fixed and "live up to" their cost, instead of a polished finished product. Studios and publishers now focus on pre-ordering over finishing.

[Shish2k]

If you have a sufficiently large amount of hype, day 1 sales can give you enough runway for a redemption arc. NMS and CP2077 were two of the most hyped games in history and they barely managed it though, so I’m not sure it applies to the general case.