Making them announce 1.0 might be for a corporate reasons, consoles have finished products sold with dlc released after that further in time.
Having an early access version of this kind of game could bring uncertainties in console game community, or could be forbidden by rules. I think it is sort of a solution of what we have as situation here by renaming EA, Alpha to 1.0.
For me it is just words changing, not the further development of the game or the experience that we will have in 7 days to die 