As opposed to when?
The 80's X-men run by Claremont and Daredevil run by Miller is up there - I don't recall seeing 5 variant covers, embossed, poly bagged issues during that time.
There has never been a time in the history of the company when a good product was more important than a punctual product. At least not in continuity.
Quality of writing trumps style back in the day. Readers were more into substance.
As I've said earlier, "they were in MORE for the money" during the 90's. Marvel tried making money by pandering to insufficiently_thoughtful_persons.
Every company's goal is to keep shareholders happy. Everybody knows this.
They were making money without the cheesy gimmicks - they just got greedier in the 90's because the market allowed it (speculators).
I could be wrong, but wasn't it DC who started the 90's debacle. With 5 different covers for Robin 1, that was followed by Marvel and bagging X-Force 1 with 5 different cards, then X-Men 1 had 5 covers, then foil covers, then Bloodshot 1 had Chromium and Marvel went nuts with Chromium, and so on and so forth, and somehow we ended up with X-Statix, and Doop. Wow, I just had a horrible flashback.