This analogy fails because all those products are all commodities. A TV, CD player, car, and light bulb can all be easily replaced by another model or even another brand that performs almost identically. Fallout: New Vegas cannot.
Sure there are other RPGs out there that share the same basic gameplay as FNV, but none offer almost an identical experience (except Fallout 3 of course, but I suspect most FNV players that are willing to buy the game despite the well known bugginess of it have already played through all of Fallout 3 and its DLC).
While I did find the constant crashes very annoying, the gameplay was still exciting and fun enough for me to prefer restarting and continue playing, rather than setting it aside and waiting a few months for the bugs to be ironed out. This coming from a 31 year old gamer with years of PC gaming experience, and not just an easily impressed teen.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more this kind of behaviour on the part of the game publishers makes sense. There's plenty of examples where people are so excited about something new, they are willing to accept a substandard product in exchange for the ability to experience it as soon as possible. Why do you think cam recordings of movies are popular, or why apple fans line up for first-gen releases of a gadget that even they know will likely be buggy, or even why people eat cookie dough before it is cooked? The game publishers are merely pandering to our human nature.
