"No amount of updates are going to make the game better, or make it come out sooner, quite the opposite. It's just more tasks on the already enormous list of tasks to finish. It's time-consuming to make your game look presentable to the public. That is done at the very end of the development process."
"We didn't do the marketing for the market, but for the potential investors. We are going to do proper marketing close to release. Presenting the game constantly just creates a vicious cycle. Every update creates anticipation, that turns into disappointment for some because the game is not out yet. We realize the frustration, but at the end of the day, we think it's better to lay low and have most people put the game out of their minds than constantly bait them.
The reason we needed the hype, in the beginning, is rather simple. Let's imagine that we live in some magical world where out of nowhere you just receive all the resources for the game you want to make as a completely unproven, new studio. In this magical scenario, the public wouldn't know about our game because we wouldn't announce it until 6 months before the release (whenever that may be) and then just have a steady stream of marketing (hype) up until release."
I like their approach.
It's a catch-22 with games marketing. As indies, you've gotta promote your game to get funding. Only Nintendo and other few companies can afford to do all the marketing close to release while the teams work on the games. Maybe it's a thing about shareholders and the company trading publicly? So laying low and then advertising their game when it's nearly done, is preferable as you can focus on that aspect 100%.
They make a good point that I hadn't considered surprisingly, on why AAA companies release CGI trailers from companies outside of the developer team. Allowing the core team to focus on development while someone else builds up the hype makes sense in terms of resources.
