I don't expect a game to be perfect in the first edition, similar to how I don't expect a book I buy to not have a single typo and don't expect the New York Times to never have a dangling modifier. They're made by humans, and you'll never have a day when they're all perect right away.
With electronic games, there's actually a bonus that flaws can be fixed, unlike my dead tree copy of a book. Does it make some people lazy about initial quality? Perhaps. But in games, it doesn't matter a ton. In space shuttle software, you wouldn't have any buyers if they weren't convinced of your initial quality.
Price and danger also is a factor. If the game you buy turns out to be 'meh', you're down a couple Jacksons. If you buy the special at a restaurant and it turns out they didn't do enough taste testing on it, you're down several bucks and if it's really bad, a queasy stomach. If your gas grill blows up, you've got a bigger problem to deal with.
I take it you drive a Toyota and don't mind having an electrical short run you into a wall...
The thing is, even Toyotas in these days of accelerators that get stuck to the floor and a lot more reliable than the average car was a century ago.
Cars also provide a good example of consumers being a motivating factor, more so than governments. American car companies used to build cars to last 3 years or so, assuming you'd buy another one after that. Then Japanese car companies started selling in America at similar prices, but with much greater reliability. Now, American car companies have to build cars of better quality than they did previously. Competition -> win.
Eventually, it will change. Microsoft and similar companies will no longer be able to fix bugs in future versions and force you to buy them to get them finally resolved, only to introduce even more bugs that essentially forces you to buy the next version.
Microsoft isn't a very good example. Windows Update had been around for several years by the time of the whole Justice Department affair, and even the Internet was common, service packs were common (and not just for Windows - also, sometimes adding significant features, such as XP SP2). Microsoft is also pretty good about supporting their software for a long time with at least the most important updates, as well as supporting several versions back at a time. About the only case that comes to mind where you could argue Microsoft was nickel-and-diming for an update is Windows 98 Second Edition, for First Edition users - but that was as much about features as fixes. It does help that Microsoft has a lot of corporate customers, who are more likely to be picky than game players.
If you're thinking of Vista, yes, it certainly did have its flaws at launch, and things seemed much better for most people with 7. But most of what caused people problems with Vista wasn't actually changed with 7. Most Vista crashes weren't solved by fixes in 7, they were solved by better drivers that almost all companies made available for Vista as well, and with no additional cost, with time. The performance seems better in 7, but that isn't so much because 7 is less bloated (though it is slightly better), but because a computer bought in late 2009 is a lot more powerful than one bought in early 2007. Most of 7's changes are new features.
By comparison, Adobe very nearly did do what you describe
this spring.
