Damn. This probably makes sense for RTG, and I understand and support their decision. I have no problem with them wanting to be able to collect some income to fuel later episodes/chapter. It will probably make a lot of people happy because they'll get to start playing DFC soon...maybe even before November.
But for me it's absolutely terrible. I have no problem waiting indefinitely for a complete game, but I will not play a game an episode at a time. [For example, I didn't buy The Walking Dead until all of the episodes were out.] When I play a story-based game, I want to immerse myself in it and play the complete product. Waiting months between chapters makes that impossible. The only way to achieve that is not to play until the final chapter is released, which is what I'll do.
The worst part for me personally is that there will be no way to avoid spoilers on these forums, especially as further chapters are released. Chapter 1 info will no longer be considered spoilers once Chapter 2 is released, and so on. It's understandable, but is incompatible with my model of play. Spoilers will even creep into Off-Topic. I'll have to avoid everything.
Won’t story and pace be affected by the episodic release schedule?
Since the story was designed for episodes, in-game time already passes between each book — sometimes weeks, sometimes months — and the story won’t feel any more fragmented than originally intended. Each book also has its own, self-contained arc, with a beginning, middle and end.
I'm not sure if he's saying 1) "an episodic release schedule won't feel any more fragmented than if it had been released as one entity," or 2) "we originally intended it to be unavoidably fragmented due to an episodic release schedule, so really it's not any more fragmented than we intended."
If 1), then I disagree. While I'm sure the episodes will be self-contained, there's no possible way the overall story and game-playing experience will not feel more fragmented than it would have been had it been a single release. If 2), then he's just saying that the fragmentation was by design.