On the other hand, that also meant that if the team/company didn't give a toss about the quality they'd release the product unfinished, and there'd be no way to

On the other hand, that also meant that if the team/company didn't give a toss about the quality they'd release the product unfinished, and there'd be no way to improve it even if someone wanted to. So while in some cases you'd have time to polish things up, in a lot of cases you still had the "eh, it's good enough, ship it" attitude without the benefit of being able to fix anything later.