You mean KotOR2 and NWN2? That's why I said I think the delay is a good thing. The potential is there, as demonstrated by those two games, IMO. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can release when they have enough time to do it right.

I think the reason for the delay was purely related to marketing. In an older blog post Avellone was saying how basically very little work was being done on the game anymore and it was just merely polishing.
I think Sega delayed it because they realized the game would've been eaten alive if it had been released in March since the month was so busy. But in the Summer it will garner more attention and stand out.

You really can't hold that against Obsidian. In both those cases they were handed someone else's work (Bioware) and they were rushed by both publishers (Atari and Lucasarts). There were many things in KOTOR2 that were better than KOTOR but the trouble was there wasn't a proper ending and a lot of content was dropped. Obsidian need a publisher that will give them the time to get a product finished and at last they seem to have found one with Sega. Say what you like about Sega but they seem to be very serious about PC publishing now.

The counter-argument to that one is that Obisidian are horribly mismanaged and don't know how to meet a deadline :p. Basically the same problems with Troika.
Don't get me wrong, I have generally liked every Obsidian game I know of (same with Troika), but I am really starting to reach my limits with them. If it weren't for my strong desire for an ME-style spy-game, I would probably just skip this one. But hopefully they can redeem themselves and confine their screw-ups to New Vegas :p

Absolutely. The problem with Obsidian is the same Troika had. Far too much ambition and not enough skills to implement it properly in a given deadline. Thing is in the past Both Troika and Obsidian had to work with publishers with very little patience. Atari, Lucasarts and Activision want the games out there and selling. Bethesda and Sega however both seem to be happy to delay if there is good reason to. I don't want Obsidian turning into another 3D realms or Valve but there needs to be a happy medium between ideal development time and publisher deadlines.

To say that "content was dropped" is to miss a golden opportunity to point out the difference between "surgically removed" and "hacked off at the knees with a chainsaw". Also, it was buggy as hell, but then quite a few of the bugs were obviously caused by the aforementioned chainsaw maneuver.

Well yeah, if the final shipped KOTOR2 was as Obsidian intended it would have been on 5 CD's not 4. The sad fact is it was Lucasarts that decided it was "Good enough" and shipped it in a completely broken state. Something Obsidian have freely admitted.

Well, obviously Obsidian are going to blame the publishers :p. And I am sure the publishers would blame them for not meeting deadlines.
I dunno, I just am really hesitant to give Obsidian a pass after all these repeated "We didn't get a chance to finish things" arguments (although, NWN2 was a nice change of pace. Horribly incomplete engine instead of incomplete game :p).
Yeah, they got screwed by having publishers who impose deadlines. But so does almost every single dev team. The only ones that don't (Valve, Blizzard, and 3d Realms come to mind) are all notorious for having heavily delayed games. Sure many of them have great end products, but then you have things like Duke Nukem Forever... And you also have questions of if games like Ep1 and Ep2 really should have taken that long to make.
Whereas, with most dev teams: Yeah, you might have a lot of cut content. But the core game is almost always complete. Why? Because they know how to work under a deadline. Look at KOTOR. If I recall correctly, there was an entire planet that got scrapped from the game. But everything else was complete (well, as complete as the Star Forge could ever count as, since it was just a bunch of detailless platforms and endless waves of enemies :p). Then you have KOTOR 2 which was missing (multiple) planets and over half the ending.
VTM Bloodlines is actually a really good example of salvaging a game (funny that it is a Troika :p). Yeah, it got delayed/rushed/whatever the hell'd. And yeah, the endgame suffered. But it still felt coherent and "complete" (if rushed), whereas almost everyone left KOTOR 2 saying "What the hell?"
Like I said, while I loved Troika and do like what Obsidian actually completes, I am not really holding my breath on any Obsidian games. Hopefully they'll surprise me, but I sincerely doubt that it was 100% the publisher's fault.
Sort of like how fans are trying to blame Fox for Dollhouse sucking. :p

As far as I know, Avellone directly took the responsibility on himself, though I don't know the details at the moment. But it's also clear that they couldn't have been in an ideal position for this to happen. They had little time, had to work themselves into another company's technology, maybe had staff problems, and had to wrap their minds around a working concept and pull it through in time. While the latter might have been a bigger problem than it should be, I see no reason to be so condemning about the company for all future games when they clearly display unique qualities while the problems are of a nature that can be improved on.

Obsidian had big ideas for KOTOR2 but it was Lucasarts that set a date and that was when it was being shipped finished or not. Lucasarts don't really care if a game is good or not as the Star Wars name is enough to sell millions. Yes it was Obsidians fault for being too ambitious in the little time they had which they all admit. But KOTOR2 was totally Lucasarts' fault, they simply didn't care the game was broken they knew it was Star Wars and it would sell no matter how bad it was.

And a similar situation with Atari. Obsidian maybe overreached, but Atari was in financial straits and basically told them to ship NWN2, finished or not.

Pretty much.
The problem with Obsidian and Troika before them is there are huge names working there but the actual name of the company is a no-body. They deserved to be far bigger than they are. The way I see it is that Obsidian went into NWN2 and KOTOR2 expecting to make a name for themselves, they wanted to not only make a sequel but make a better game than the original. The trouble is in both cases they were never given the time to do that. They probably expected Atari and Lucasarts to say "Wow this looks really good. Tell you what, have another four months to finish it". Instead they got "Look all we want is a sequel, we don't really care about improving it. Is it playable? Then it's good to go".
Sega are giving Obsidian the time they need and it seems Bethesda are doing the same. The ball is squarely in Obsidian's court now. If they screw up Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas they have no one to blame but themselves.

I am not saying they didn't get rushed (although, proper planning could have mitigated the impact of being rushed...), but I am saying this: What makes Obsidian so special that they release insanely incomplete games, whereas other dev teams release games that we would think were complete if it weren't for examining the assets?
We blame LucasArts. Yeah, they kind of have issues. But KOTOR 2 is the only SW game that ever felt "incomplete" (to my knowledge. I probably missed a few). Yeah, there were some stinkers (Masters of Tera Kasi. Pretty much all the RTSs can be argued as stinkers. The Jango Fett game. Need I go on? :p), but KOTOR 2 is the only one that felt like it had just gotten cut in half.
Sure, what you depict is probably what LA said to them. But by that same token, I suspect that a "normal" dev team would say "Crap, we only have four months to go. Okay, I'll go ask for an extension, but start wrapping things up anyway." whereas Obsidian likely said "Crap, the dude who shines George's shoes is coming by tomorrow. Make sure the game compiles!". We've all worked with these people before. The people who have no sense of meeting deadlines and who will spend three weeks on something that should have taken three days.
Using a comic book example. I for one have loved many of Kevin Smith's books. But he also has insane amounts of delays. It took him four years to finish a six-part limited, and it has been eight years since he finished issue 1 of another limited. Then you have writers like Peter David who pump out fifty straight issues of a book (while doing other jobs) with no noticeable delays. Yeah, a few issues felt stretched out (had to reach that 50 mark :p) and one or two even felt rushed, but it made the deadlines.
Again, I really hope that Alpha Protocol and New Vegas are not indicative of Obsidian's record (albeit, I want the former more :p). But I also worry that they might just not have it in them in their team's current configuration. I hope I am wrong and that they just were always bad at giving estimates, but I doubt it.

Thats my point though. Like I said Sega and Bethesda are now giving Obsidian the time they say they need. If Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas appear rushed and unfinished then you are right that they simply cannot finish a game, they are incapable. If the two games are mana from heaven though then we know that Obsidian were right and they were cruelly rushed in their previous projects.

Like Gundato said. People need to put some of the blame on Obsidian. Two different publishers and the same problem, leads me to believe the publishers aren't all to blame. I like NWN2 better than the first. And I also thought KOTOR2 had it's moments. But I do think they have problems finishing on time. For all we know, they could have blown through their budget and the publisher was getting pissed at them.
I also don't quite understand people holding Trioka in such high regard. I have two of their games. The Temple Of Elemental Evil, which I wasn't impressed with. And Vampire Bloodlines, which didn't work well for me until the first fan patch came out.
There are too many good to great games out there to put up with problematic ones.