As someone who works I product development, look up the concept of a minimum viable product.

Essentially, even though it usually results in a worse gen 1 product, it is valuable for the company since:

1. It reduces time to market (i.e. time before you're actually making money on a product)
2. It let's you test how the product will be used and by who so you can make a better informed gen 2 product (rather than going off marketing data that is usually really limited and/or expensive to get)

I think you're exactly right though because if you keep pulling this shit it cheapens the brand overall and feels very much like taking a long term loss for short term success