While I don't put much stock in Russ Pitts' recent petulant diatribe to the game industry because of this game(I think he over-sensationalized the problem, but what do you expect from a journalist trying to get hits to make money), I still have to say that releasing a game that can not be completed because (from the sound of things) it consistently(or nearly consistently) just crashes is PITIFUL and INEXCUSABLE. In my opinion, the game developer should have the decency to be willing to refund all or at least part of people's money for such piss-poor performance on their part. Such shitty quality is not tolerated in any other industry; why should games and software in general be any different?
I played the first Fallout 3, all the way through. I was not impressed. A vast, free-roaming interactive wasteland of nothingness. There's more to do and see in a desert than the city-sized void of Fallout 3. The game was simply big, but there was next to nothing in it for all that size. I realize it's supposed to be an apocalypse, and you're not likely to find much in the way of interesting things to do or see after an apocalypse. Certainly, it's more realistic to make things as such; however, it makes for a pretty uninteresting game, in my opinion. You have to take artistic license with reality if you want to make an interesting and enjoyable game. Mimicking reality is a gimmick that doesn't always work.
After such an experience with Fallout 3, I had no interest in dealing with the game ever again. It just wasn't fun. New Vegas sounds like they threw significantly more into the yawning abyss that is Fallout 3 in an attempt to fill it with something(anything!) to get the mass-energy density above infinitesimal, but they forgot to make it work(and if you go by Yahtzee's critique, they still forgot to make it fun, also).