Comment Day 1 misconception (Score 1) 261
When a game goes into Cert for first party consoles, i.e. the game is complete, nothing else is to be added to the disk so that Nintendo, Sony, and MS can test the disk for compliance to be published on their systems, you're looking at a 4 to 6 month period between the disk entering Cert, going Gold, and then going to disk pressing and distribution and then actually hitting store shelves where nothing new is or ever will be added to the disk (except for major bug fixes found in the cert process). But this is still 6 months where you have developers on staff with all the tools and expertise of development still fresh and ready to go. So unless you've already scheduled the next product cycle (which you shouldn't while the game is still in Cert in case issues arise), you've got plenty of resources you can dedicate to turning around day one patches and DLC. Cert process for DLC is usually much shorter, because it's all building off the engine that was already tested on the disk, and since there's no manufacturing or distribution lead time, you can usually have some pretty high-quality DLC available in pretty short time alongside your disk's actual launch.
Day 1 patches also get a lot of flak, but are often a much more preferable solution (from the developer and publisher's perspective) for fixing issues that are turned up in cert that don't require you to restart the cert process and potentially delay your game's launch. It screws over the users who aren't online, but in today's console environment, that's such a non-vocal and shrinking minority of users that almost no one in the industry is any financial trouble for not going out of their way to cater to them (actually usually the opposite).
Not that a lot of Day 1 DLC (or DLC in general) isn't still not worthwhile, but the idea that it was content the devs were sitting on and decided to exclude to screw over the customers just doesn't jive with reality. No matter how much content may be included on a disk that may or may not have been relegated to DLC, there is always a huge chunk of time between the disk being locked and the disk hitting shelves where the devs can work on new material that may be ready in time for launch.