Mario Kart was announced well under a year before release, I honestly don't think it helps to hype up games that are too far from completion

Don't people get tired of making this same argument year after year!? I mean seriously it's the same thing every year.

I think one of MS's main sales pitches is "Play good games today for cheaper than the PS3"

The more they talk about the future the less the focus on this. When PS3 is constantly talking about games coming out in a year, they are helping drive this pitch home. They could have never sold a 360 to someone who bought a PS3 waiting for MGS4, so why try?

You could actually probably argue that all the hype for Killzone 2 has been hurting sales of FPSs on PS3 for the last year.

Yea, i don't think it really makes a difference. The people who know this information are the people who already have the consoles and honestly, who buys consoles for games that aren't out yet?

All of the games coming out in 2009 have been hyped up since the start of the ps3

Ms keep their hand close to their chest. They like to reveal big games or release games at the same date their competition is revealing/launching something big in order to take away some of the competition's publicity/media facetime.

Ye know what I'm saying. Essentially Ms is a marketing company, and they're very good at it.

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.

You and people like  you are a small minority of people who buy consoles.  I agree with DirtyP2002 100%.

Nah. Only aficionados are aware of those things.

i not being funny right but if Microsoft don't announce a killer title soon they will lose that lead that they have big time because ps3 has a better lineup this year.