Certification is there for a reason: to avoid a piece of software bricking your console. As much as developers hate it, that's non-negotiable, and rightly so. It's thanks to it if we can happily avoid having to thinker with configuration files, reformatting consoles, and all that jazz.
Developers cut corners and speed-up processes by sending incomplete software for certification, then working on it in the meantime, and then certifying the patches as well. As soon as something goes wrong, you have to postpone your game, even if it's already in gold.
This is a messy way to work (hence the constant crunch time) because you can't afford (or don't want) to wait for a job well done, and you are also not able to put a limit on the scope to which a project is, at least initially, "complete".
I agree with you that nothing is finished anymore, but I do not understand the reasoning behind it being a good thing. If anything, it shows that 8 years of work have been a mess. And if you could have fixed all that by postponing 2 weeks, speaks volumes on the management too.