More like "frequency of bugs" developers put out for their games. Best to buy only once the "GOTY/Definitive/Special edition" is released and all DLC's are available and when it's a couple of years and 50 patches old - including patches fixing the patches. And when the game is on holiday discount sale. The game is then smooth and playable with no blood-pressure inducing defects and doesn't need too much Googling/forum-posting on asking what went wrong.
It seems there is a window of ideal time. You've described when that window opens. It closes as OS's evolve out from under the last patch. Steam in particular appears in no hurry to require games be playable after any initial QA.
