There's A LOT to unpack here, and I'm going to have to try to keep this relatively brief. Suffice to say, I absolutely get where you're coming from. The relationship between vendors and customers has changed profoundly in recent years, for a lot of different reasons - chief among them, the rate at which we consume products/ services and then move onto new ones almost immediately. This means the cost of satisfying a customer might not be offset by the value of that customer's loyalty. And yes, the fact that so many products are just vehicles for fluid, digital content that can be "spackled over" if early adopters squawk loud enough has disincentivized proper (costly) QA.
COVID, of course, had a BIG impact as well. A lot of people forget how much we're still feeling the impact of this in terms of economy and culture. The workforce was upended in a lot of ways; supply chains went nuts; costs skyrocketed for customers and vendors alike.
And yes, the QC arrived right in the thick of it, and yes, there were a lot of issues. (I still shake my head at the screen shots of the editor on Sweetwater's web page.) But when you write things like, "'Buy it for what it does now' did not exist before the QC and now it’s mentioned in *every* digital device launch", I can't help but think that you're overstating the NDSP's relevance, and the role they played in all of these trends. As portended by e.g. (but not only) the games industry, this was the path we were on; NDSP didn't open some Pandora's Box. I could argue that this confuses cause and effect, meaning: the QC launch didn't cause these trends; these trends caused the wobbly QC launch.
Of course, the actual truth is probably a bit of both.
