There are a lot of pressures to release a game with a lot of non-crippling bugs in it, actually.
- Meeting the scheduled release date
- Beating a competing product to market
- Getting to market before a certain sales season (Xmas)
- Getting some revenue to continue development (An issue for smaller developers)
I'm sure the programmers would love to work out all the kinks before the product goes to market, but sometimes the potential benefits of a premature release (or costs of a delayed release) outweigh the PR damage from releasing a buggy product. Patching mitigates the cost of premature releases, so it's obviously an advantage to the developer.
It's also obviously an advantage to the consumer, if the consumer buys and plays the product after it's all patched up. It's the consumers who play a buggy product before it's been patched who have more mixed feelings about it (like The_vagabond7). They feel like their time and money has been wasted.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
