> Release dates ought to be pushed back by however long is necessary to fix essential problems. This would ultimately benefit both developers and players.

Depends what you define as "essential", most problems evolve due to a meta that exists in a game, or is otherwise subjective or only appearing at grand scale.

Others (bugs, mostly) can have a reproduction rate of 1:500,000; We will never find those issues until millions of people have crossed that exact path.

I agree to the principle.

Anyway, when it comes to discounting the game publishers actually don't get much choice, nintendo can do their own thing because they own the platform and the IP; but Sony, Microsoft and especially Valve are absolutely punishing in pushing game costs down shortly after a release. For them, selling more units before the IP is out of the public mind is much more important than having some kind of bigger profit over a longer term.

But this is getting incredibly off-topic.