Yeah it's a total PR disaster especially with the announcement coming a mere 24 hours after they once again explicitly stated it wouldn't be delayed which was already off the back of several other statements to this tune in the past 6 weeks. Lots of staff thrown under the bus and whilst the faceless social media team will get away fairly clean minus a bit of Twitter abuse at the company, I feel for any who made that commitment either through interviews or during the livestream as they will face a lot of ridicule even though it wasn't their choice.
If they get it out in December then it'll be forgiven and forgotten especially if it's a fantastic game but it seems people aren't convinced by the excuse or confident in the new release either and after what's now happened, I'm also a bit iffy about it. The situation almost mimics that of the original Watch Dogs 7 years ago at the start of the gen - it was due for release as one of the most hyped games in recent memory and a massive launch title for the new gen of consoles and out of the blue it was delayed by 6 months and was nowhere as good as expected. I hope it doesn't repeat with this.