That's sorta the crux of the problem. He might have actually believed that 52/52 was reasonable and possible, especially as a solo developer. And this is after more than 3 years working on this game. Anyone else would've known that it was an impossible goal (unless as you stated you have a team of people working on it). Even then it leaves no room for errors or fate (weather/hardware/health/etc.).
The more realistic goal he's seemed to have settled on, 300-400 renders a month, is very possible. The problem now is that there is no structure/schedule attached, so BD is back to floating all over the place on delivery times. And with the missed deliveries comes less communication, and he slides back into the old cycle again.