Yeah, the "rules" for claiming an OT need to be defined perfectly in the main post of this thread.
Is it okay to claim something at first reveal?
Does a release date need to be announced first?
What about leaks?
That stuff needs to be explicitly outlined. It comes with the territory with a forum of NeoGAF's size especially when said forum is continuing to grow at record pace.
As for right now, claim it when you want to but:
a) A claim does not give you a claim on the thread. You have no more right to make it than 250 people who didn't claim the thread and later express interest in making it. The purpose of claiming is to avoid people independently wasting their time and both posting, not to give someone a fiefdom. In 99.9% of cases, people don't care enough to need to pitch in if someone else is already putting the work in. But in the 0.1% of cases, if you are not willing to work with people who want to help make the thread, you do not get to make the thread. The person who most favours cooperation is the person I'm going to side with every single time, I am not ever ever ever going to care about someone who thinks they have a right to do this. I don't care if you have a full chest tattoo of James Bond getting into a gunfight with a Helghast, if someone else wants to make a Killzone 007: Quantum of Boring thread when the game comes out, you work with them. It's not a contest to see who is the biggest fan and we are not giving out prizes.
b) A claim is a pledging of responsibility, and if you claim something 5 years early and don't follow through because you forgot, honestly, mods have no reason not to junior or ban you because you went out of your way to cause a result that negatively impacted other people.
Nemesis does an extremely good job maintaining this thread, extremely good, all of us on the staff know that. Which is why it's important to know when a pissing match breaks out, instead of people working together, you're sending the message that you don't respect him and you don't respect us.