I personally think the time to begin the big hype drive is around four to six months before release. If you start too soon, people start suffering hype fatigue long before you're ready to release, at which point you start losing potential customers because they get sick of hearing about it.
If a games company starts putting out teasers too far in advance their potential customers start thinking the game is never coming and label it vapourware, which means they'll then assume a troubled dev cycle, leading also to lost sales.
It's a lose-lose situation.
So I totally understand why we aren't being told much right now. They're working and we know that - but if there's nothing more to tell, why start stirring up excitement when the actual release date is still too far off? It's simply counter productive.
