I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but I feel that the vast majority of gamers that would be interested in this game probably didn't have the slightest clue about any issues the game has had. I read tech sites regularly and as such I, like you, chose not to buy it, but it wouldn't surprise me if sales were to still be fairly good. The problems were newsworthy, but in the UK I only noticed a few articles stating the issues, and compared to other games the news seemed fairly tame when you look at the severity of the issues. It wouldn't surprise me if this news was largely ignored by those that found out through mainstream news sites.

The thought of being happy about a games failure feels quite bad, considering those that worked on it are real people who would probably like some successful projects under their belt, but in a way I'd be quite happy to see that EA had suffered because of this release.