I think its a poor excuse from their part. If you promise something then you should deliver it. If you loose a little cash on it then you will learn for next time to calculate things better....
I would prefer they loose another feature than loosing this. This is what makes a world come alive. Something Richard Garriot was famous for doing in his Ultima series. Elder Scrolls also did it very well.
I don't think they had many options, the only feature that I think they could reasonably cut to make room for day/night cycles is the coop but it's too late in development, all the time and resources have already been placed into it. Overall, seeing how the game is coming together I don't mind the loss of the day/night cycles and I understand the need to cut them. Nonetheless I personally would have preferred if there was no coop instead, we can only hope Larian understand that any and all forms of multiplayer are only diseases in the game industry and only ever result in greatly diminished games and will never do it again.
