Why not just announce the games for the upcoming year in October at Pinball Expo at the Stern Party? I tend to think that it would create a ton of hype and that way people could plan their purchases instead of flipping their LE's to get the next one that they didn't know they wanted till it was announced. (sorry for the run-on sentence - I'm dictating this post)
There would still be excitement about the pending game playfield reveal and people would create a second go-round of hype around that event. Keep Stern on their minds all year long.