All I can think of is Sony and HG issuing refunds to whoever requests them, upon request.

It's marketing 101. If they told you what the product actually was you'd be less inclined to buy it. I don't get why people act like this is a new thing to gaming. This has been going on forever, gaming and not.

I would argue this phenomena is "marketing 101" because too many consumers are so gullible. Apathy won't fix it. Let's work towards changing that. Let's urge people to be skeptical, to stop pre-ordering games, to wait-and-see.

Yea it is but this is nothing new.

I don't understand.  What is the misleading part?

just curious as I own the game and I am trying to figure out what you're trying to say.

Instead of avoiding all pre-orders, how about just avoid pre-order from companies who consistently deliver products that are obviously half baked when they come out. That way you're only hurting misleading companies. Also the general consumer, as you said, is too gullible. However that is due to the general public being stupid and I doubt that itself will change anytime soon. Until they start doing research these large companies who never deliver their promises will get a free pass. The hope you have to have is that the proles will one day realize they don't have to settle for what they have and actually do something 

E3 footage and final game footage don't match. So much so that some people who also own the game complain the game they purchased looks little to what was shown.

How so?  Can you actually say what it is im looking for in the videos?

the space station looks similar, ships similar, space launching landing and planetary beacons similar.  Space ships large and small also similar.  

What am I looking for ?  I'm being serious.

It's a start.

I don't have the game or really care about this, but i recall earing Sean Murray in a interview saying that 1 in each 10 planets would be good looking ish and the rest would be deserts and unappealing, the one conducting the interview ask him if he wasn't mistaken, because that didn't make sense to him, and Sean reaffirm the statement and added that if all planets were beautiful and full of resources there wasn't much incentives to explore the giant space. Right there you can see that most of the backlash is just poor information by the customers and misplaced expectations IMO. I know people did not explore real space but if we could do it, did you expect to find weird life forms or beautiful dinosaurs? Really?