Surprise Release

"So, not only are we super psyched for you to play this, we’re happy to tell you that you can play Hi-Fi RUSH tonight. Not a demo, the full game. Seriously."

— John Johanas, Xbox Developer_Direct 2023

Advertising is important to make sure word is spread about your work. Typically, most major works have a multimillion advertising campaign behind them, with the company trying to make sure as many people as possible are convinced to buy into it. On the other end of the spectrum, there's Invisible Advertising, when the network puts little to no effort into promoting an upcoming work, usually because they're either more focused on one project over others, don't want a certain work to succeed, or believe they have a flop on their hands want to quietly bury it.

A surprise release (sometimes known as a shadow drop) falls somewhere in between; the company is confident that a work has mass appeal, but instead of building up to its debut with a prolonged pre-release marketing campaign, they reveal the project and subsequently announce that it's already available to buy. Whether this is due to thinking that the true appeal of the work is too hard to explain and that audiences need to experience it directly so they can "get it", because the work in question is part of an existing franchise or from a known creator with dedicated and vocal enough fanbase that the company can simply get away with the act, or some other factor, the end result is that as soon as the trailer ends, you're told you can watch/play/listen to this right now.

These kinds of works typically have been worked on in complete secrecy, often to the point that some of the involved parties don't even know of its existence until mere days, or even hours before they come out. While advertising may still exist and begin circulating to help promote the product after release, most of the "marketing" is arguably done more through word of mouth by the intrigued few (or many) who decide to immediately give it a chance.

While an extremely rare practice beforehand, sudden releases started to take off as a marketing strategy during The New '10s, after digital distribution had become the norm and made it easier than ever for consumers to access new content. You'll most commonly find this occur in the fields of music and video games; especially the latter, where announcing a game's immediate release during a high-profile news event such as a Nintendo Direct isn't uncommon, as the high viewership of such livestreams or conferences by enthusiasts can garner smaller game developers far more attention than a standalone marketing campaign at far less cost.

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Examples:

Film — Live Action

• The Cloverfield Paradox: The film's first trailer was revealed on February 4, 2018 during Super Bowl LII, with the announcement that it would be released on Netflix right after the end of the game. This was done after Netflix had acquired the distribution rights from Paramount, who, after the film's extremely Troubled Production, didn't want to risk releasing an inevitable Box Office Bomb. The surprise release ended up paying off for Netflix, as despite negative critical reception, the film was seen 5 million times during its first week.
• Fyre Fraud was released with no prior fanfare by Hulu, presumably to complete with Netflix’s highly anticipated Fyre.

Literature

• A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo was revealed and released "in a complete coincidence" during the March 18, 2018 episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, having already been published, and just one day before the release of the book it was parodying, Marlon Bundo's A Day in the Life of The Vice President, as a massive Take That! towards then-VP Mike Pence and his homophobic views, as the climax of a segment on him.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds combined this with an Early-Bird Release for the Season 2 episode "Those Old Scientists", a crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks— the episode was previewed at San Diego Comic Con 2023, and released on Paramount+ five days ahead of schedule.

Music

• Beyoncé's 2013 Self-Titled Album is the Trope Codifier for the modern surprise release. After 4 was subject to a Content Leak, Beyoncé was recorded in secrecy, with only her innermost social circle being aware of its existence, and with a constantly shifting deadline. Thus, its release at the end of 2013 occurred with no prior announcement, and the result is widely credited with popularizing surprise albums. According to Beyoncé, she followed this model to reinvigorate public interest in album releases after their decline in prominence during the 2000s.
• David Bowie's The Next Day was recorded over the course of two years in complete secrecy, with everyone involved being required to sign non-disclosure agreements. Even the executives at Bowie's label, Columbia Records, didn't know about the album's existence until the last minute. Thus, when the lead single "Where Are We Now" suddenly dropped on Bowie's 66th birthday, it caught the general public off guard, as everyone assumed that he retired following an on-stage heart attack nine years prior.
• Eminem's Kamikaze was released in 2018 with no prior announcements or advertisements as a deliberate contrast to the lengthy pre-release campaign for its predecessor, Revival, owed to this album's nature as a response to the critical and fan backlash towards that one. Eminem repeated the technique with his next album, Music to Be Murdered By, releasing both it and the music video for "Darkness" on the same day with no advance notice.
• Radiohead's 2007 album In Rainbows is often credited as the Trope Maker where music albums are concerned, being not only announced a mere ten days before release, but also being released with a very unexpected new "pay-what-you-want" system (fans could download the album on their website at whatever price they deemed it be worth, including for free). The band did this as an experiment for a variety of reasons, including dissatisfaction with traditional release and promotion formats, and curiosity with the ever-increasing popularity of the internet and its potential as a tool for discovering music. The smash success and publicity surrounding this move ended up inspiring much bigger acts like Beyoncé and U2 to pull off similar stunts.
• Red Vox's Kerosene was announced immediately after its release of Bandcamp, with the band making no prior indication that they were recording a follow-up to Another Light.
• Both of Taylor Swift's 2020 albums, folklore and evermore, were released with no prior announcement, owed to the isolated environments enforced by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Swift's label, Republic Records, wasn't informed about folklore until a few hours before it dropped.
• U2 released their 2014 album Songs of Innocence on the same day it was announced at an Apple event, with the gimmick of it being released on iTunes for free, and downloaded automatically to over 500 million iTunes accounts. Unfortunately for them, the majority of users didn't appreciate an album they didn't have much interest in taking up storage on their devices without their consent, and Apple was forced to create a specifically created link to get the album out of their libraries.

Video Games

• Almost all of Nintendo's 99 series games were released within 24 hours of their announcement:
  • Tetris 99 was announced during the February 13, 2019 Nintendo Direct, and released for Nintendo Switch Online members later that day.
  • Pac-Man 99 was announced over social media on April 6th, 2021, and released the next day.
  • F-Zero 99 was announced and released during the September 14th, 2023 Nintendo Direct.
• Apex Legends was released on the same day it was formally announced, which was very unusual for an Electronic Arts game. Developer Respawn Entertainment were behind that decision, stating that they took inspiration from Beyoncé's surprise album strategy.
• Blaster Master Zero II was revealed during the Nintendo Direct on March 20, 2019 and released on the same day for the Nintendo Switch.
• Counter-Strike 2: Despite rumors of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive receiving a Source 2 engine upgrade having been circulating around the community for months, it still came as a surprise when Valve released three gameplay trailers of the new installment on the same day and announced that limited beta testing will be rolled out the very next day.
• Unlike its predecessor Undertale, which had a two-year pre-release period marked by a demo and a Kickstarter campaign, Chapter 1 of Deltarune was abruptly released on Halloween 2018 under the guise of a survey program. While the project was obliquely hinted at over the course of several years, Toby Fox never gave any explicit announcements about it during that period, resulting in the release of Chapter 1 catching fans and media off-guard.
• Drainus was released on Steam the very day it was announced, with no leadup from its publisher Playism or its developers WSS Playground or Team Ladybug.
• The first DLC for Final Fantasy XVI, Echoes of the Fallen, was released the same day it was unveiled during the 2023 Game Awards on December 7.
• Hearthstone: Unlike previous and future expansions, every single new card from the League of Explorers set was revealed at BlizzCon 2015 with no preview season, and it was released at the end of the Hearthstone panel about a month ahead of the normal schedule.
• Hi-Fi RUSH was first revealed during Xbox and Bethesda's Developer_Direct presentation on January 25, 2023, and its segment was capped off by director John Johanas announcing that viewers could play the game "tonight". Sure enough, it released digitally on Xbox Series X|S and PC a couple of hours after the show for only $30 and was even added to Xbox Game Pass.
• The PC port of Hohokum, a game originally released in 2014 exclusively on Sony consoles, was announced during publisher Annapurna Interactive's 2022 digital showcase, and released right after said showcase ended.
• Three spin-off titles in the Kirby series were all announced and subsequently released the same day: Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, Super Kirby Clash and Kirby Fighters 2. Of the three, only the last one had any information leak the day before the game's eventual release.
• Nintendo announced Metroid Prime Remastered for the Switch during the February 8, 2023 Nintendo Direct, as well as its immediate release on the eShop, with a physical release coming two weeks later.
• The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog was announced and released on Steam for free on March 31, 2023 (April 1 in other territories including Japan), with the Sonic Twitter teasing "a new direction" for Sonic a couple hours prior, which turned out to be... "he's dead."
• The first NES Remix was announced during the Nintendo Direct on December 18, 2013 and released that same day for the Wii U.
• Persona 4 Golden's Updated Re-release on Steam was revealed the same day it launched— June 13th, 2020.
• The digital versions of Switch remasters of Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 were announced and released shortly after the June 21, 2023 Nintendo Direct. The combined physical release would come in September, a few months later.
• Sega infamously shadow-launched the Sega Saturn console in the United States, revealing during their E3 1995 press conference that instead of the original plan to release it on "Saturnday" (September 2), the system was already available at select retailers. The move was done in hopes of beating Sony's new PlayStation to the punch by a few months, but only served to irritate developers (many of whom weren't told about the new release date) and alienate retailers (with those locked out of the loop refusing to even carry Sega products for years afterward), killing the Saturn's chance for success in North America. The whole fiasco is often seen as the beginning of the end for Sega as a console manufacturer; the PlayStation ended up outselling the Saturn nearly 10:1, and the mere announcement of the PlayStation 2 was enough to seal the fate of Sega's final console, the Dreamcast.
• Silent Hill: The Short Message was first revealed at the PlayStation State of Play of January 31, 2024, then became available to play for free later that day. What was especially surprising is that the project wasn't included in Konami's splurge of Silent Hill announcements in late 2022 (where works like Silent Hill: Ascension, a Silent Hill 2 remake, and Silent Hill f were announced), despite The Short Message having been in the works since much earlier (rumored to have been worked on since as far back as 2016).
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate:
  • The September 3rd, 2019 Nintendo Direct announced that Challenger Pack #3, Banjo and Kazooie, would be released that same day, have a gameplay reveal in the form of a Mr. Sakurai Presents immediately after the Direct.
  • Sephiroth got a Mr. Sakurai Presents showcase on December 17th, 2020, and was set to release on the 22nd... however, if you owned the second Fighter's Pass, you could fight Sephiroth in a special limited-time game mode. Beating him in this mode would unlock Sephiroth for use in the game, as well as the Northern Crater stage and associated music up to five days early.
• Unravel Two was first revealed at EA's E3 2018 conference, and was immediately released after the show.

Web Animation

• hololive's sixth generation, holoX,^note pronounced "Horokksu" as a pun on the Japanese word for six "roku" and "ekksu" for X) was suddenly announced mere hours before their first member debuted. In comparison, other generations like HoloMyth (i.e. Hololive English Generation One) or the fourth generation (most well-known for Kiryu Coco) were announced well in advance, allowing hype to build. holoX nevertheless quickly racked up subscribers and views, despite the comparative suddenness of their unveiling.

Western Animation

• ARK: The Animated Series was originally announced at the 2020 Game Awards, only for the project to go radio silent for over 3 years... until it suddenly dropped on Paramount+ on March 21, 2024.
• Ratchet & Clank: Life of Pie was released on the Canada-only streaming service Crave on February 14, 2021 without any prior announcement from producer Mainframe Studios or IP holder Sony Interactive Entertainment.

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