"Console manufacturers and app marketplace gatekeepers have stringent quality requirements, and a single crash bug can prevent your game from shipping". Not in my experience, usually when the hard ship date comes it goes out the door.
There's a bit of give and take, but when I was at EA, certification was serious business. During beta when we had a final candidate build and the console manufacturers were testing it, we basically sat there with our fingers crossed hoping they didn't come back with an issue.
My friend scored his dream job "game tester" for Rockstar. The fun turned into tests like "Run to edge of gameworld, fire 25 rockets, run back, swap rocket gun for pistol, run to edge of gameworld, fire 25 shots, run back, repeat"
