Why do people care?

I mean, yes, all else held equal, I’d rather have a video game two days earlier or whatever, but this is way down the list of things I’d get worked up about.

Hell, the crowd waits for at least a year after release, at which point all the patches and whatnot are normally out, often sales are on, hardware to run a game tends to be cheaper, and often people have done substantial work on game wikis and the like. I can understand someone not wanting to wait for a year, but who can’t handle a day or two?

EDIT: Or let me put another perspective on it. The release date is essentially arbitrary from a player’s standpoint. Suppose some serious bug had shown up late in development – which could easily have happened – and that release date had been pushed back by five days. I doubt that anyone would have said anything, even though they would have gotten their hands on the game several days later. But the inability to preload making that same game show up playable a couple of days later has articles being written complaining about it. Why? The delay happens either way.