When Sony announced the release date at E3, there was little buzz. It was like "finally", "nothing to see here", and "expected". It was competing with something much bigger than itself in terms of initial hype (COD), and i guess it was being drowned by all that stuff around it.

Prior to the delay announcement, there was still little buzz. Then, because of the delay, people went crazy and just showed all over the place how much they were waiting for GT5 after all. The internet has been in a state of panic over the last few weeks discussing "WHEN FFS", and some people were actually "canceling preorders" (whatever lol).

Then now that we have an actual release date straight from Yamauchi, the forums have reversed polarity all of a sudden and now they're praising the lord like Jesus himself came down from heaven again.

Isn't this all free advertising? Free hype? Self generated desire to buy the game?

Sony didn't advertise the game at all, bar a few internet sites and whatever. They've saved on marketing thus far, but marketing was being done for them for free by every disgruntled person on the block.

In the end, the total message most angry fans were saying is "SHIT, WE NEED THIS GAME FFS", thereby possibly creating a giant ripple of desire to buy. See now, just simple announcements of a release date from a delayed game is making us shit our pants.

I think this might have been the plan all along....

It definetely has been

After it got delayed EVERY GAMING MEDIA SITE had GT5 rumour articles non-stop;......the amount of free press the game got is staggering really!

Forums were FULL of GT5 release date speculation....I don't think GT5 has been talked about this much on forums. Ever.

Now all SONY need to do is give it aggressive marketing

it very well could be.  the best part is that because we can never no for sure how things would have worked out otherwise, any speculation in this thread can't be proven wrong!

GT5 Delay increased it's sales by over 1M units confirmed!!!

Huge internet buzz doesn't equal to huge sales. We have seen this so many times. Normal customer that is going to buy GT5 doesn't follow any gaming forums. Actually Gt5 might have rather weak first week as there is only about two weeks to market the game assuming that Sony starts marketing tomorrow. Of course in longer time frame it's going to sell extremely well.

The people who are discussing it were going to buy the game anyways. It's all the casual people who don't read message boards that need marketing for.

Take a look at what happened to Black Ops. The internet buzz wasn't all that great. There wasn't nearly as much talk as MW2 on the boards and much of it was negative. But it had a much better marketing effort. The launch date was known for months. Advertisers put banners up weeks ahead. Tv commercials were occuring months ahead of time. IMO, the difference was quality marketing which led to the biggest opening of a game of all time.

GT5 will still sell great, however I do think there will be opportunity loss. Especially in the US because they may have missed the advertising window for black friday. In addition, November 24 is the biggest travel day of the year which means that many people will be travelling rather than shopping. Black Friday will be dominated by cheap sale prices, not necessarily by the latest and greatest. Because they missed the advertising window, it may not get the steep price discounts that other products get.

This whole confusion do resemble the same one instigated by an Indian director for his high budget movies, by postponing the release date for his movies, the hype keeps building up till it can explode to record breaking booking even on premieres. The recent one being:

http://koimoi.c2w.com/2010/10/07/endhiran-–-robot-breaks-all-box-office-records-for-opening-weekend/

No... when a kid asks his mother to get GT5 for him she will say: it's not out yet, and they don't know when it's out what other game do you want.. it will sell great but some mothers already spend holiday money on other games ...

well the release window is black friday. i'm pretty sure that whoever mom out there has money for that.

lol that movie was awesome

We'll see what pre-order numbers are like next week (not for the week ending the 13th, but for the 21st) to determine how far the outbreak went when it was given a release date.

I believe it finally hit 1 million pre-orders WW this week. It has roughly 250k in both US and Japan, and 500k in EMEAA. Week one sales won't be staggering, but when people FINALLY realize the game  has been released, the rush will be staggering.