Are you sure those AAA games released early because of the Early Access trend? Keep in mind they did not release as Early Access, but as full release.<p>A much more fitting theory is simply that such AAA games are absolute monsters in terms of cash expenditure and as all software developments are, very hard to estimate in advance; so they probably ran into cash flow trouble and managers decided to just release it and fix everything else after release, which has a VERY long tradition.