The only problem here is that you must pay for the product before you can play it and possibly discover bugs. This gives us much less power to vote with our wallets because we can only refuse to purchase their next offering. Because of the saturation of the video game market the loss of some dissatisfied customers appears to have very little impact on sales, as the developer can expect to pick up many many new customers on the next product. (Of course they can also rely on the relatively short attention span of the average video game consumer.) Most game developers are not interested anymore in building a good brand name because at their core they are more interested in the short-term profits ie. the sales of the current game. This is just like almost every other type of business, and unfortunately it's just the way it is.
I understand your point of view, but if your assertion is true (and I'm not sure that it is) then, imho, a customer of such short attention span and limited critical thinking is responsible for a market of crappy games.
On the other hand, I don't think that the average game player is that dumb. In fact, I think gamers are some of the most demanding (in a good way) customers of computer software. I, personally, think that game software is some of the highest quality software that exists and has a higher customer satisfaction rate than other kinds of software.
I have no studies to back this up, just my personal 2 cents.
And I do think that good gameplay affect future profits for a company. Would anyone care about Diablo III if Diablo would have sucked? How about Civ? Or Warcraft? Certainly not all the civ games are equally liked (I didn't like Civ III) but I was willing to give Civ IV a chance because I liked Civ I and Civ II. I *love* Civ IV and can't wait to try Civ V.
Maybe we (you or I) should launch a poll on the civ fanatics boards and see how many people who bought Civ IV are first time gamers. I'd be surprised if it's more than 33%.
In my opinion, when you purchase software you should be implicitly buying the rights to use the software and the services including technical support and patches. I'm not satisfied with the more real way of taking a shot in the dark these days when you purchase software.
And, as I said, you are voting your wallet. The fact that most people don't respond the same way might mean that most people are comfortable with their game buying experience. Or, at least they're comfortable enough that they are continuing to buy.
Me, for example, I always buy games late... often even a year or more after the game comes out. I can then make a decision I feel comfortable with.
I have another buddy who buys every game he thinks he'll even remotely like. To him, it's just like going to a movie... some you will like, some you won't. He is comfortable with the price point.
I suppose that there could be a large percentage of game players that are spending their parents money on games, and consequently don't "feel" the full effects of their decisions. But even then, I imagine most parents don't give their kids an unlimited budget.
What I'm saying is, nobody is holding a gun to anybody's head and saying, "buy this crappy game or else".
Have you ever played pong?
I said in my post that a game of any serious complexity will have bugs.
-- SJN