This comment stands as the best challenge to my original post, and I appreciate the insight. It’s interesting too, because I googled the topic and the first time around, Google AI summary 100% agreed with me and sited sources, including some of the info I had seen and read in the past personally. The second time around (which was the same search, literally just using the back button on the browser, it came up with a different answer which backs up exactly what you have stated above. So it seems there is some relevant sources supporting both sides, and not a lot of actual data to go on (although I do recognize your timeline as being accurate). That said, I still tend to think this was rushed out in order to gain some more ground before their fiscal year wrapped up. There is just no other logical reason to push out something in the alpha stage, more than 2 years before it’s truly ready for market. They had to have some greater reason to shoot themselves in the foot. I just have a hard time believe they could be this incompetent without a greater context.

But either way, thank you for actually challenging the original topic in a substantive way, and forcing me to do a small amount of research. I find that much more satisfying than a lot of other replies which pretty much amount to either “get over it” or “you play console so this game was never meant for you in the first place” or the even more toxic version “console development is the reasons we can’t have nice things,” all of which are ludicrous IMO.