How exactly are you supposed to "release early, release often" when you're shipping DVDs to tens of thousands of retail locations? After going through months an

How exactly are you supposed to "release early, release often" when you're shipping DVDs to tens of thousands of retail locations? After going through months and months of Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo certification on a 3-ring binder full of technical requirements? And having the ESRB play every level of your game to make sure it doesn't have boobs or entrails? Not to mention that for every programmer on these games there are 5 to 10 artists and level designers cranking out content. There's no automated regression suite to make sure that your last minute physics tweak didn't break one puzzle in one level somewhere. There's a reason that console developers have miserable lives - they have huge teams and launch dates that are very expensive to move. I'm not saying that things couldn't be done better, but it's a fundamentally hard problem.