It's bad because it can be. Mobile apps are easily updated, so they don't feel the need to do as much testing. There's no way an actual Pokemon release would be that buggy, because they couldn't fix bugs later.
It's fucking bullshit.
I'm so tired of people releasing utter crap and claiming it's OK to fix it later. You know what happens when you do that? You turn off a huge number of people and poison the brand.
It's not like if they waited an extra months to actually fix the issues (which were apparently well known in Beta) the Pokémon brand would've been dead no one would've cared. This isn't tied to some new property that no one knows if it will succeed.
This is tarnishing a major brand and ruining a fantastic opportunity.
All because a bunch of developers don't care enough about what they're making. They don't have enough pride in their products because "people will buy crap, we can fix it later."
Apparently what happens is your app becomes one of the most downloaded in history.
The truth is, those "lazy developers" are right. They can release utter crap and fix it later. People will put up with it simply because of their emotional investment in the brand, and it will make money regardless of its issues.
I don't understand why this discussion is about the developers. Do you think Tim, who writes network code for the iOS version, gets to say when they launch?
No. Some top dog at Niantic says "We're launching early to catch the summer buzz while kids are out of school." And Tim says "But we don't handle network disconnects gracefully yet." And top-dog man says "Can you still catch Pokemon and battle at gyms?" And Tim admits, "Yes, you can." And top-dog says: "We launch tomorrow, then."
I wouldn't blame this too much on laziness but on incompetence.
Also the 3DS has patching/software updates. The Pokemon Company could release games as buggy as they want. They have the good sense not to do that, since it devalues their product.