[Hajo]

Problem is that quality is not immediately visible, and thus does not support sales as well as sexy graphics and, already to a lesser amount, a good soundtrack.

People buy it, intrigued by the graphics and text on the box, and it takes a while to spread the word about bad quality. And then people still buy it and hope for patches to fix the problems - while more boxes sell due to the catchy design and slogans.

I think this is also a problem for indie developers, they cannot make sales this way. Your above mentioned public design doc could be good for marketing though.

[RampantCoyote]

I understand that at Microsoft (which of course is not a games company at its core) has an equal pay scale for QA and developers.

The rest of the software industry is finally getting a clue, but slowly. Games, however... its not happening.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[Hajo]

Maybe games are not "durable" enough as a good that consumers really ask for the quality. Also most games are cheap, compared to some other software products. And there are so many to choose from.

Indie developers are closer to their audience I think, and therefore feedback is more immediate. I think in this closer relation, quality is seen differently. While some expectations are lower, mostly for the appearance, I even think some quality expectations are higher, for the functionality.