I feel like relying on a big splash release is an intuitive, obvious, and wrong approach. It's like a kind of waterfall methodology, where we should be doing iterative: Release something early to a limited audience, gauge reactions, fix the obvious mistakes and implement the feedback from players. Then keep doing that. If you can't even get a small audience (like a small gamer forum) to play, then you're already in trouble and should revise your idea. Once the game starts to look like something with mass appeal, start planning a real release. If you want a splashy go-live at this point then change the name of the game and do it as a clean new release, but this time you are releasing something that has been market tested and proven to have appeal.

Also, and this is encapsulated in the ideas above, don't freaking rely on family, friends, or acquaintances, to tell you what they think of the game. Not even other devs. Nobody wants to be the asshole that shoots down someone's dream. Again, if you can't even get actual players to try your game then you have big problems that you need to work on.