I think part of the reason things end up going bad to worse to good to bad to worse and then maybe good again is because they keep getting pressured by the community to rush these things without properly testing them. Of course, it's partly SD/GPG's fault for rushing the game out, but quite frankly, I think things would be best if they did some more extensive testing with their updates, if only to stop the excessive BAAAAAAAAAWWWing from people who don't understand that these things take time, and this is what we get when we take away their time.
Now, I'm not saying SD/GPG are the greatest publisher/developer in the world, and I'm not saying that we should let them not worry at all about thier title and its networking, but I think that we as a community should have the decency to get off their back and let them do their job the way they're supposed to.