Two generations ago gamers rebelled against games that kept being pushed further and further back from thier original release date. Intrest declined and when the title didn't live up to 4 year long Hype profits suffered. Then the interweb went from being a PC only thing to being a living room console staple. This was bolstered by the spike in gaming popularity brought upon by titles like CoD with user friendly gameplay. Along the way Games became exponentially more complicated and expensive to make while gamers refused to pay a penny more then they had for the previous decade. This lead to alternative methods of revenue generation. DLC replaced Expansions and was no longer simply additional content but a way to compensate for shrinking profit margins. In addition to this it was proven that a big marketing budget resulted in higher early sales. Research also went into predicting what was the best release window. (i.e. Holiday Season for big titles and off season for riskier titles so there is less competition) Pre-orders do in fact accentuate and inflate the ship now patch later problem but it is neither the source nor the absolute solution. It's bad. But eliminating it wouldn't even begin to solve the gaming industry problems.