This is what happens when game companies basically set their revenue targets based on preorders, and games as a product are non-refundable.

It's very easy to imagine a bean counter saying "we hit our preorder target, let's cut back our development budget now, release it, and we've already basically maximized our profits on this.

The state of the game industry at large is pretty gross as a result of a lot of the money incentives not lining up around building great games.