For context, Bethesda provided minimal support to Obsidian and gave them an absolutely absurdly short development time frame to make the game in. I think it was only a year.
The bugginess isn't all their fault. The game director even released a free mod or two after the game released to do some rebalancing and add a survival mode to it.
it was 100% obsidians fault. they agreed to the time, and they yet again were way too ambitious, like with kotor 2. its just who obsidian is, bad time management and bad ambition management. they do make great games but those are 2 real flaws they have
At least they no have MS money behind them so they can go that last mile and tidy things up now. Much like Bethesda here too, under Zenimax Starfield would have been out last year with all those bugs and issues still in place.
I think they definitely could, and have. Super buggy games are kind of their thing, it didnt stop with new vegas.
But I dont think it will hurt sales. Long as it isnt crashing the game, people have been waiting for a bethesda rpg like this for ages. Even if npc heads do rotate like propellors people will buy this thing.