To be honest, I don't think he should set a date until it is ready to ship. Hell, wait until it is uploaded and all he has to do his share the link... THEN he can set a date. Any other time he has screwed it up and missed the date. (including his supposed issues with being able to upload).It's so weird that he keeps up setting deadlines when he knows that he misses most of them. If I were in his shoes, I would only give any release date when all the renders and animations were 100% finished and most of the code was done. Even then I think at this point he would somehow still miss the deadline.
I can only hope that one of these days, his patrons finally give up on him, and he gets the reality check he needs, and starts being honest.