Very simple theory for why marketing isn't showing anything about ME:A.

True enough. But this bare-bones marketing hardly inspires confidence. Hopefully BioWare gets the ball rolling before the game comes out...

I don't see how an ending problem is relevant.

no, this new game has nothing to do with the trilogy, me3 ending is long forgotten by the media,
they dont need to show much because the people increase the hype and it sells better

the true reason behind the lack of material shown will be known after the release

Hmmmm... Hmmmmm... Yeah, I can see what you mean. The secrecy around story/characters/the actual Andromeda Intuitive, I can understand (the same sense of awe and mystery sci-fi gives me). But I would still like to see gameplay mechanics detailed soon...

The ME3 ending is the only thing people bring up still when I try to talk about Mass Effect outside this community.  Especially people who have never played.  When I talk about this game, people are like,  "Oh cool, but the last one was shit and this one is still being produced by EA."  It's like the Atlanta Falcons will always been known as the team who lost the Super Bowl in the biggest come back in NFL history until they actually go back and win one.  People don't forget, especially gamers. The hype isn't there. 

I have said this in another thread before, but it fits better in here:
If you take people's average attention span into consideration, they can't release much information too soon™, or the peak of interest will have passed by the time the game comes out. That doesn't apply to anyone here in the forum, of course, but there may be gamers out there who don't spent entirely too much their time waiting for every scrap of news. In other words, they will probably dump a good portion of information on us closer to release, my guess is less than a month, maybe even just two weeks before launch.

They are getting a ton of free marketing with people speculating on youtube anyway.

Doesn't anyone see that a lot of their adverts right now are just folks like us building hype if we want it? Or actively looking for information on the games as it inches towards release?

That's not a bad point. The point is that they are not showing much, so people looking for more are kinda looking for scraps IMO. If they revealed more (like some core elements that are more detailed) then people wouldn't have to analyze everything to death, it would just be in people's faces.

But that also is probably part of the plan it seems.

In the past year i've noticed a lot of companies are purposefully showing very little of their games in standard marketing, outside of trailers or small gameplay snippets, while Youtubers take them and analyze them thoroughly to generate buzz the old fashioned way- word of mouth.

BioWare, and to an extant EA, have latched onto that strategy which has been effective, id argue, compared to the old way of promising a lot, generating tons of hype, and failing to deliver it. Inquisition, despite it being a good game to me, kind of fell into that trap because a lot of what was shown was also cut in development.

If anything, this is a response to Dragon Age and it's marketing, over the ending of Mass Effect 3. In truth I think it's just a game publisher realizing a trend and feeding into it.

Atemporal Vanguardian-Debugger, so you think that the marketing team would constantly be telling us that this game has nothing to do with the trilogy? That could work either to their advantage or disadvantage. If they make it a not issue - the ending of ME3 - then its a low risk move. Their whole philosophy for their marketing campaign this time around is very low risk.

I think they are learning from DAI's mistakes. Show too much, change too much and you get a lot of unhappy people.

They don't fear the fans, they are focused on getting the media side of things done, and in order to get it right they worked overtime on the game for the events that happened today. While it seems unfair the fans come second, they haven't forgotten us and have said so many times. The gameplay vid is coming and the rest of the profiles. They have shown enough to keep us coming back for more, and they will continue until the final trailer where we'll see enough to know if we should buy it or not. Though I am buying it no matter what and I actually don't care about the marketing and find everyone is being ridiculous about it, but that's just me. Never been disappointed with any of their games tbh.

As for telling people it's not connected to the trilogy, first people keep asking, second with the choices given for the ending, it could have changed MEA in many ways and complicated it. Oh you let the Quarians and Geth live. Oh you killed the Geth. Oh you are all machines now! Too many outcomes that affected the whole galaxy. It's better to just leave it be, but they did say we will get callbacks to the previous 3 games, so they are hardly forgotten.

You have summed up my own feelings on the matter better then I ever could (hate it when that happens, but cheers).  And indeed, the launch trailer, and the youtbe commentators getting their hand on the game might make up the minds of a lot of people on whether or not they will buy it.  Only stupid fan boys (raises hands) pre orders games these days, and I think game publishers are starting to figure that out.