It sounds like the one famous quote often attributed to Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto was likely never said by the guy at all, and rather what happened was a classic game of "telephone." The actual origins of the quote appear to be from a developer from Origin Systems, the studio behind the original System Shock. The dev in question is Siobhan Beeman and she said it back in 1996 during a panel at the Game Developer's Conference, with the REAL quote being "A game is only late until it ships, but it's bad forever."
The quote being misattributed to Miyamoto began in the early 00s when someone on a Usenet forum discussing a delay for the game Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death posted the quote most everyone knows, but going back even further in time on Usenet it sounds like what might have caused it to be attributed to Nintendo is a discussion in 1998 when Ocarina of Time was nearing release and someone said "I believe Nintendo or Rare's in house motto is 'A game is only late until it's released… a bad game is bad forever.' "