Where I work, we tend to have many short-term installations in trade shows. No network access, and you can't turn it off to fix it in the middle of the show. After delivery, you're not changing any software. You're not even going to get to change any configuration. It had better work, or somebody's going to be getting their money back.

Seems like platform game programming must be somewhat similar, so I don't think I have a completely niche perspective.

On the other hand, if something does break in the middle of a show, we usually blame it on the hardware. So maybe I'm agreeing with you after all!