What's the difference if it's EA, Ubisoft, Apple etc... Nothing is preventing a holiday price drop for bitongo which could be outweighed by the author's projected increased holiday sales. Further, a good app will rise above shovelware appropriately. Is this really a detrimental scenario for a start-up?

The problem is that EAs products are not shovelware, but actually worth the 7+ Dollars they usually sell for. Thats where the huge perceived value comes into play.

Exactly. That's why I think releasing your game at Christmas time has the least probability to be successful compared to any other release time.

I'm curious how this applies/work in the Android Market. We can update at anytime, but are there top 10 / featured marketing tricks there too?

Funny you should ask, there's a 10 $.10 apps x 10 days promotion going on right now.

Actually, one of my apps was just part of that promo...

https://market.android.com/details?id=cloudtv.hdwidgets

Part of why I was curious about the other playground.

Some of those apps from the first few days are still at the top of the top 10. I wonder what the benefit of that for subsequent full price sales will be!

Better to release more content, for Christmas, for a polished game than to EVER release a game that needs weeks of more polish.