Working on a game, we had a build ready two weeks before the end of a quarter, but we weren't quite done. We had just a few minor tweaks that needed just two more weeks to complete, and we in fact delivered a complete game two weeks later...that was ignored, because it was more important to make their quarterly goal than to release a better product.
Turns out there were several games being developed that quarter, and ours was the only one to make it even close to under the deadline. But because they were doing quarterly reports, they were under tremendous pressure to release something, and so an inferior product was released.
Oh, and this was the era of physical cartridges. No updates possible. We put in a ton of extra work to make it perfect and they didn't care.
The international versions were shipped later and included the improved changes. If anyone is interested in seeing the difference, you can probably find the ROMs and a Game Boy Advance emulator: Check out the US release of "Tetris Worlds" and any of the international releases (all include English, but the three different international releases each included other languages as well).