It all depends on what they mean when they say "manufacturer".
If they mean the publisher then their dates could be accurate, as a publisher would have to be selected by the Maddox team with all that goes along with such a decision. Finalising the selection of a publisher means that the publisher would demand to know when it's going to be finished to account for all the shipping arrangements, possible promotion drives, etc, so this gives it all a certain credence.
Even then, there is quite a lot of room to go both ways as on one hand lots of games get delayed by publisher decisions, on the other one they could be providing a worst case scenario timeframe and it happens to be shipped much earlier in the end.
If they mean the developer, then their date could simply mean "we saw Oleg Maddox's recent post in the Friday update, he says they're close so let's take a guess and post a revised date".
My personal conclusion? I don't think the data is as in depth as i would like in order to consider it concrete evidence.
If they said "company X emailed us and gave us this release date" then we'd be talking business, but it's obvious that they can't reveal the name of the publisher yet (and the Maddox team is doing the same).
The only reason to withhold such information is if the deal is not yet 100% finalized, in order to avoid causing an upheaval in the community if a publisher change happens to take place. I'm not saying they are making stuff up or not, because i'm not in the position to know. For all we know they could be right, but they sure aren't giving me much reason to believe them just yet.
Short version: nothing's changed yet, at least for me.
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