Then in your first example being polished to the last bit from the user perspective would become essential. There still are things you can sacrifice, e.g., the

Then in your first example being polished to the last bit from the user perspective would become essential. There still are things you can sacrifice, e.g., the source code running the game doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be “good enough”. Although I think in your first example “being polished” is a subjective value. There's not such thing as being polished 100% and not less, you have to stop somewhere anyway. I think there's a complex relationship between gameplay, polished interface, marketing efforts, maintainable code, etc., and your entrepreneur objective is to pick when it's a “good enough” combination. Also, I'd disagree with you, a lot of games aren't really polished, say some popular Zynga's products I am guilty I had been using some years ago—although I'm not an expert in game industry (maybe it's a different market, or things has changed).