With the widespread of internet and the whole industry looking for money I see that the quality of release versions is getting lower and lower. Companies can release an unfinished piece of software - since patches could be easily made public and available for everybody. Depending on the amount of sold copies they can fix something or not.
I bought NWN2 when it was released. I expected it to be unfinished but also expected quick fixes. All the balance stuff with that content of NWN2 is really complex and probably most of the unbalancing stuff will probably found and noticed by the thousands of hardcore gamers. No problem with that. Was is playable and stable? YES. edit: especially with thousands of different objects
Falcon4 or Falcon Allied Force - I expected issues on FalconAF, since tons of opensource changes were included in a company product and calculating of 500,000 objects in realtime is really hard work. Was is playable and stable? YES.
Gothic III - I expected issues from complexity... and from Gothic II.
Was is playable and stable? NO. Current patch size is about 1GB, but not released yet after a fix small patch right after release. Is it playable now? NO. After months and millions sold copies.
I never buy Gothic ABX again.
Anno 1701 - I expected issues from complexity. No issues at all. Working fine even with a small miny patch it works fine out of the box.
SH4 - actually just a 20 more new models, a new engine ( but that's actually just an upgrade to 2004 tec ) - I didn't expect that many issues. Stable? YES. Playable? Sort of (if you mark your "A" with a big red X). To me SH4 is just a replacement of the theatre, especially when you look on the scheme of the files etc. Most models are available in the internet for free or a small fee. That's why the SH4 vs SH3 come up again and again. There shouldn't be year 2005 errors again.