[alex d]

Artificially limitting supplies wouldn't boost sales, neither would releasing it without any marketing campeign. Sure, hardcore fans would orgasm and grab the game the moment they saw it, but those same hardcore fans would know before they reached a store. Games that "just" hit the shelves without any sort of pre-release press, advertising and build up generally don't sell too well because the average consumer doesn't know it's a big new release and would pass it over.

In this electronic day and age, it would also be impossible for the game to hit the stores before anyone knew about it. Games arrive days before they're released, so shop employees would know and spread the word that it's out and that's just the end of the chain, so to speak. As soon as it goes through the ratings boards like ESRB it would be "found out" as they tend to publish all their ratings quite promptly, a number of games have been accidently "announced" by such ratings being found. From then on, there's a lot of steps between going gold and hitting the shelves, which means many people will know about it long before release day.

In my opinion, the game would need a good 4 to 6 months of pre-release build up to get the average gamer's interest rolling again.