Is the crowded holiday season really a good excuse for the ROTR sales or a cop out?

[binary solo]

I think if RoTR could have released in late September, and been given a proper bundle and decent marketing hype it would have done much better, and it could have been an added special for BF bundles: Get Gears of War bundle + RoTR for $299. Would have been huge.

It's a damn shame that they aimed the game for a November release with much fanfare talking like it would be a centre-piece of Xb one's Holiday line up, when it ended up being a forgotten orphan child among the hype of other games. Tomb Raider is always going to be somewhat of a harder sell on Xbox, so MS and SE really needed to give it a decent marketing push and some room to breathe. Releasing it in November denied it both of these key elements for sales success.

It is clear that games can and do have very successful launches at pretty much any time of the year, so there was no need to put its release in the holiday lineup, unless CD was unable to deliver a finished game earlier than that. Though MS may have also wanted to make the 1 year console exclusivity feel as long as possible. Basically, if you release a game in September with a 1 year exclusivity in the minds of people who want the game for the console getting the late port the current year is written off and the only thinking is about how long into the next year you have to wait. If you only have to wait until Sept of the following year then this seems like a shorter wait than having to wait 'till November.