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.

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 ...

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.