Most AAA games take longer than 3 years to make. Why are your expectations different with CIG?

Your arguments against, while valid, were also made (and still are) against the Macintosh platform when Compaqs, Gateways and Dells could all be had for less, and there was a ton more software available for Windows XP compared to MacOS. It didn't mean the user experience for those Macintosh users wasn't better.