Quoted from bemmett:
Well perhaps then you didn't own a Ghostbusters or Game Of Thrones or Kiss or ......, I wouldn't consider anything related to Stern as being arbitrary. Have they done better recently, yes, but do you they have a consistent track record, absolutely not. The code version can sometimes give some insight to how far along they feel it is.
Well lets work backwards
Black Knight SOR = basically finished when it came out
Munsters = basically finished when it came out
Beatles = finished when it came out
Deadpool = done within three or so months
Iron Maiden = basically finished when it came out
GotG = done within four or so months
Star Wars = I'll admit to not being super familiar with this code history, but it seemed to come out basically done
Aerosmith = basically finished when it came out
Batman 66 = the one game that did ship with garbage code, but Stern was upfront about it and would go on to make it their deepest game to date
Ghostbuster = done within a few months, but still going to see a large overhaul because of complaints over the years
So in the last four years...Stern has done a pretty great job with getting games to feature complete code shortly after launch.