Games like MAG and God of War 3 had their release window almost a year in advance. Fans, then, can wait in anticipation, and perhaps plan out their game purchases in the future, and save their money for that game they really want, since they know when it's likely to come out.

Gran Turismo 5 doesn't have any kind of window at all, and so we don't know if it's coming out this year or next. The problem with that is people have no idea, so they will end up buying the other racing games instead already in the market. If Yamauchi had announced something like 'early 2010', some of the Gran Turismo fans, who could be potential buyers of NFS, Dirt, or Forza would've held onto their money instead. Now, as it stands, without and idea at all about their favorite racing game, they'll probably just buy any one of the others. And a lot of them could be swayed away from GT because 'they already have a racing game'.

Bha. 

Most people who like GT are casual players, so if he announce it a week in advance they will wait for it.
if he announced it a year ago. they would lose interest and just forget about it.

Firstly we will have a release date in 3 days. Secondly Gran Turismo is one of the big boys, not a small franchise which GOW is in comparison. MAG is a shit game is the beta is anything to go by so meh.

That said I personally think it is SONY holding back the release of GT5. Reason being that if it indeed releases in December it will move a serious amount of systems. Then again it could release at any time and sell well but holiday season will be that bit better.

Gran Turismo has no competition SALES wise. Notice how I said sales and not quality, the brand new is extremely strong. Rest assured if GT5 released anywhere near Dirt 2, Forza 3 or Shirt the developers of those games would be shitting bricks.

Game will do fine when it releases this year. :D :P

also another reason is that Sony want people to buy the PSP version first.
if they announce the GT5 people will forget about it.

KillZone 2 had it's release date moved around so much that I'm glad GT5 doesn't have a release date yet. To many games get announced and then don't come out til 3+ years after they are announced and they constantly get new release dates during the time they are suppose to be released.

God of War III has had only 1 release date. FY 2010, which got trimmed down to March 2010. MAG was announced for this fall and got pushed back to Jan. 10th I believe.

GT PSP was suppose to release with the launch of the PSP back in the 2004/2005 timeframe. Nearly 5 years later we finally have it and it's not up to par with the console versions.

White Knight Chronicles was announce at TGS 2007. Got released Dec. 25th in Japan last year. Won't be out in the NA and EU markets til 1st quarter 2010.

I would rather not know about a game til it's close to release before announcing it. I'm fine with announcing a game 6 to 8 months before release, but I'm tired of knowing about a game 3+ years before it's released. It takes up space from newer games. Everyone was talking about Killzone 2 from 2005 til it got released. The game isn't even at the damn 2 million sales mark!

We were talking about that game for nearly 5 freaking years!