I don't think it is easy for anyone to understand how software development timelines can be affected, unless they've been through it themselves on a complex software project.

For certain, with any groundbreaking technology there is going to be unforseen issues that get revealed along the way. That obviously happened with verbLive, where Rory said something to the effect of "we didn't know what we didn't know".

Market however appears to have been ready to go earlier this year as evidenced by the fact it has soft launched and been holding private events for several months. However the experts they have as consultants at Rockwater believed it was necessary to hold off until mid summer so they could get the right mix of merchants. This probably makes sense, as launching Market with a handful of merchants, and maybe no really well known ones, people could have gotten bored quickly and tuned out on it. Also it seems the reasoning was to allow merchants to practice presenting just to their own customers they feel comfortable with, and also to build up a library of prerecorded presentations.

First impressions are important, and hopefully in mid summer when Market is fully revealed, they will have gotten the right mix of merchants to give people an engaging experience that they want to come back to, and tell other people about.