No. What MS and Nintendo do are far better strategies. Ever notice that both are selling more games than Sony?
Think about it this way: If your announcing a product 2-3 years before it comes out, you are already having to allocate marketing resources that early, and starting a campaign for it. Chances are, however, that marketing dollars spent *that* early really aren't going to deliver actual units sold.
On the other end, if you announce a game very late into it's development cycle (lets say 1 year or less), you can then fund a considerable portion of resources into marketing, and have a solid return on your marketing dollar - since consumers will be less likely to forget the title exists 1yr before it comes out vs. 3 years before it comes out.
It's really not a great strategy to announce, and hype games to death well before they come out. If they flop, you've lost a ton of marketing dollars. If they do well, then chances are there were tons of other factors involved in allowing it to sell well.
Look at Gears of War - the games' marketing campaign started following the E3 blitz...And look how it turned out: It's outsold every PS3 game - exclusive, non-exclusive. Everything. And it did that on a much smaller install base back in 2006 vs. the PS3 blockbusters (the larger ones like GTAIV and MGS4) which released in 2008 - well ahead of the 360's install base of ~8m units when Gears launched.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
