Well, now I see why it works in the gadgets industry, with so much competition and Chinese replica manufacturers.
I still don't think that in software industry it works the same way. Most people I know would not care about new version of Windows coming out of the blue, unless there has been enough hype for long enough time.
And it is certainly so in the video games industry, where previews, trailers and detailed media reports are released in abundance sometimes years before the game is finished. Especially so for the more popular game franchises.
I wholly disagree for video games, but then I worked as a reviewer so I admit my view is likely very skewed from the average consumer. Near identical games come out sometimes months apart in video games, but similar happens in the film industry with Armageddon appearing 2 months after Deep Impact in cinemas in '98.
The new Harry Potter was held off last year because the produces were afraid two competing fantasy series could kill each other near a Christmas recession. Twilight, which is basically swept up in the box office and with Harry Potter 6 due out literally like a week later and cost almost 7 times as much to make.
However cooincidences occur frequently with movies and games due to waiting for the right market attention. I mean a G.I. Joe movie or Transformers movie could have been made whenever, similar with a lot of movies, however it's been impossible up until late to make live action movies with quality animation.
I personally see little difference between a lot of video games and movies. I'm uninterested in 2012, because I already saw it with Knowing and its about as meaningful as a movie on the millennium bug would have been in 1997. Then there's the whole Bedtime Stories following Inkheart (Which was due out in March 2008, but was pulled back to December 12 at least in the UK), and Bedtime Stories looked like it was rushed into production following the sale of Inkhearts rights.
Again, I'm probably not the best person to ask as I had a movie pass at like 13 (the pass cost $20 a month, I easily got $40 worth of movies per weekend). So I'll say there is a need for hype in the movie and video game industry, however I still believe there's a big opportunity for companies to rush poor quality movies into production to steal the limelight from another. This is especially true when some movies can take 3 years to produce and others are done and finished in 9 months and may wait another 6 months for release, but if you group movies too closely you end up with two distinct groups of movies (like plays) Comedy or Tragedy and then all grouping is meaningless.
I still don't think that in software industry it works the same way. Most people I know would not care about new version of Windows coming out of the blue, unless there has been enough hype for long enough time.
And it is certainly so in the video games industry, where previews, trailers and detailed media reports are released in abundance sometimes years before the game is finished. Especially so for the more popular game franchises.