I suspect they may have taken the (good) decision to spare an extra month before release just for polish and QA, and then marketing wanted to publicise that as

I suspect they may have taken the (good) decision to spare an extra month before release just for polish and QA, and then marketing wanted to publicise that as "we're really doing it properly this time". If that's the case, it might have been a better idea to announce that as part of launch PR.