Its true that XII's later problems were from Matsuno's departure from the project (I still wish someone would set the record straight on this) but before that, it was pushed back due to some of his refinements on the game. Like the time he released a demo showing gameplay for the first time at E3 and due to some mediocre feedback he decided to have it redone. I believe this was E3 04 he pulled this.

Beyond that, I feel your analysis is very spot on and I'm certain XIII's "delay" is due more on technical problems and business problems than the team putting all the love and care into the product.

I feel the only difference between XIII and XII so far is that XIII's progress has been somewhat kept in the dark (whereas XII kept having false starts with multiple delayed release dates). SE seems really hesitant to show us anything new about the product and the interviews with the design team has them repeating themselves rather than giving any real info except when they were trying to assure PS3 owners that going multi-platform would not hurt the quality of the product. Granted SE has always been tight lipped but they also showed more demo videos than they had with this title. They keep promising new info and instead we get a few small cryptic photos that are pretty but nothing else.

The demo is promising until I remember that SE has a lousy track record with them. Most of them rarely reflect the final product.