what are we buying?

I am not a bug tester. If I buy your game it needs to be done and basically bug free. Just because the current gen consoles allow for updates does not mean you can release a crapy product to meet a shipping date and plan to fix it later. You cannot rely on us to find bugs so you can patch your half-assed game... I'm looking at you Fat Princess and Wolfenstein.  When you charge me it needs to be complete and not "fixable"

Maybe we are wrong for accepting this as a legitimate business practice. The more we give up the more the companies will take. We would not accept this when buying a house, a car, or even other hobbies. Would you buy a novel if it’s only missing a few chapters and hope those chapters are added latter?  I see this only getting worse and more severe as games continue towards download only.

Video game reviewers seem to be truly at fault for give a broken game anything above a 1 and justify a high score by saying ‘it will be better when it’s patched.’

You do have a good point.  Games should be ready and only need a patch if necessary.  Don't release a game knowing that you will patch it a few weeks later just so you can get the game out faster.  A lot of companies find the problems when they are played on retail machines.  Take Bully: Scholarship Edition as an example.  It worked great on the test machines but, it was bugged when it hit retail and they had no idea it was going to do that.  There is nothing you can do till it's played by others at home.

"  

 Would you buy a novel if it’s only missing a few chapters and hope those chapters are added latter?

" @Absurd:  You're right, but they are huge typos and not all laughable like "all you bases are belong to us" they are game changing, like switching of names in the middle of the story that confuse and destroy the plot and continuality of the story.   "

Game companies will only be able to get away with what we let them, but sadly since most people are incompetent companies will always do what they can get away with. Nothing will ever change until people smarten the fuck up and refuse to buy products that are cheaply made and start to demand companies make quality products. But in a world run by Wal-Marts, products made from poison plastic made in china, and a submissive population things are only going to get much worse before they get better.

Good thing we have game reviewers, like Giant Bomb!

" @crusader8463: God, you make it sound like anyone who buys games with some bugs in it are evil. =( "

PC gamers had this same argument a decade ago and from what I witnessed in EA's Sims 3 release this past June, nothing has changed in those 10 years.  Companies are still putting broken games up for sale and then fixing them through a series of patches over the pursuing months.  The Sims 3 had three patches in 6 or 7 weeks after being released.  When patches started to appear in console games, I knew the same thing that happened on the PC would reoccur on home gaming systems.  Of course, games are getting more complicated and thus Q/A takes longer.  This year we've seen dozens of titles pushed to 2010.  Does this mean that all those games will arrive bug free?  Of course not, but will they be in a better shape than if they'd been released at their original date?  We can only hope.  It's a crap shoot, I guess but apart from giving up the hobby, there is little we can do as gamers to fix the problem.