Whether or not theres competition in the genre, putting a release around the holiday schedule is usually a bad time for your game unless you are a top name in the industry. The most famous case being Titanfall 2 being sandwiched between CoD and Battlefield with Gears of War, Final Fantasy, Pokemon, and South Park releasing at similar times too. Titanfall was drowned out by relevant and irrelevant competition and was likely the best game in that holiday season. Simply delaying it to January could have been the difference between being forgotten and the next biggest franchise.