I was reminded of a saying I've heard (I even sort of remember Jeff saying it at some point) paraphrased as "pulling a Final Fanasy X" to refer to a game that sets their release date so late/close to a holiday, that it can't reasonably be bought for it.

I wanted to look up how close to the Christmas holiday the original US release was (as I've heard the saying said only by Americans, I started at that release date knowing that the original releases were heavily spread by months). I started on the wiki here which lead to the problem of two mentioned dates for "PS2 - Final Fantasy X (US)"

December 17th 2001
December 26th 2001

Why are there two? Is one an error (Wikipedia seems to concur with the 17th but provides no direct source)? Can someone edit the Final Fantasy X Wiki page for clarity, thanks!

P.S. If you have other examples of this phenomenon of a game releasing so close to a holiday, that it actually seems difficult to expect people to buy the game for that holiday; I'd love to hear them.

[Edit - changing references from FFX Forum page to FFX Wiki page because I was silly the first time writing this]

Was it difficult to get FFX for the holiday?

I definitely got it as a Christmas present that year.

December 17th 2001 for the U.S.

Looks like they announced it as the 26th, but then pushed up the release date and got some copies in stores by the 17th according to old Gamespot news.

@syz: I would have said "No, it was probably not that difficult - the sentiment being said is that most people like to buy their presents earlier and there is a release that is late enough that expecting people to buy it at that time is pushing their luck; though anyone desperate enough could get it if they wanted to".

That was until I started going through those news articles mentioned by @lego_my_eggo which seem to show a weird development where the game was meant to come out in January, then pushed to December 26th as the first mentioned release date, only to then provide a limited release for the 17th... however the articles actually specify shipments on the 18th for sale on the 20th (no direct reference to the 17th). This looks like it was quite the mess which questions still being unanswered into December (and I wouldn't be surprised now if people were to say they did have trouble getting it by the 25th).

This is actually a little more confusing than I thought.

OK I've headed over to IGN and gone through the Articles for their PS2 page of Final Fantasy X (which says at the top it was released on the 18th, by the way). These seem to support those of Gamespot with an intended January release, followed by a December 26th announcement, then a move forward to December 18th shipment for sale on the 19th.

So I think the Wiki should say: December 18th 2001.