Consumers are not able to easily comparison shop based on warranty agreements. Of all the times I've bought software over the internet, or in a store I have never been able to see the terms of the warranty without opening the box, and most of the times, automatically agreeing to the terms of service, although I suppose I could just come up with ingenious methods of opening the packages to never agree to any of that stuff. It's really that simple. I'm sure it's efficient from the manufacturer's end, but there's nothing easy to understand, convenient, or efficient from where I stand. Industry standard is to just release defective software to the public and then expect them to wait for a patch.
Defective software is the only type of software released nowadays.
The Fringe, only Shogun worked without errors. Allegiance, Starlancer, and Tachyon ALL crashed repeatedly and Deus Ex had a problem with OpenGL video cards, which is, of course, the type I have. And if we could do something about it, the time and effort we spent trying to get our money back would have ended up costing us more than the software did in the first place. I'm the everyman here. If there's some way, shape, or form to exact some repayment from the offending company, I don't know about it, and neither does anyone else that I've met who has been in a similar situation.