You're right, this is the only barrier to wide-scale adoption of Linux by most people. For business use there's really no excuse anymore but I understand about the games. In which case it makes sense but then I would suggest the entry-level version of Windoze. Don't waste money on "professional" editions.
I am sure the Linux community is wisening up to this. I am impressed that WinE does allow games to run, I don't use it, the last version I used was still in alpha (circ. 2003) and all that would run was delphi apps I wrote. I generally deploy machines for business use, and the Linux apps are usually better than any of their Windoze counterparts.
Bad software in Linux is far and few between. I know of only one bleh application, and that's ddclient. It's bleh because it's badly coded, and the author couldn't be bothered to fix his fark-up's
Ja, for serious work, I use Linux.