outside GTprologue and GT PSP,

yeah, GT5 will be the slowest selling GT game

i dont think so. gran turismo is one of those game that everyone ends up getting at some point or another. this is a kinda bad example as it does sell anywhere near gran turismo level but ratchet and clank does a weird thing with sales. it does realy sell that much baybe 10,000 - 20,000 a wekk but it does this continuaslu for like a year and ends up selling close to 2 million. i think gt5 will do the same thing just on a migger scale. maybe 50,000 - 60,000 a wekk for aaaaaages

The userbase on the PS3 at the moment, and when Gran Turismo 5 is released, is/will be bigger than when Gran Turismo 3 was released on the PS2, and it was heavily bundled, so if the same were to happen with Gran Turismo 5, I can see a similar 15m sales, which is very possible, it may even be higher considering all the hype it's getting so far. A first week of anywhere between 2-3m would have to be achieved in order to land between 10-15m, less if it's bundled, but I think if anything, it's the one PS3 game that can break the 2m first week barrier. Infact, I think it's safe to say I'll bet anyone otherwise.

It won't be the lowest selling game in the entire series, however it will be the lowest selling console generation for the GT series. In previous generations they sold 20 - 26M respectively and this generation they'll probably end up with about 16M sales incl prologue etc which means effectively as an individual effort it will do better but as a series it'll do worse.

I don't get when people "racing games are not that huge anymore" ... since when were they huge on the PS2? the only other huge racing games on the PS2 other than Gran Turismo were Need For Speed: Underground but they still couldn't touch Gran Turismo sales numbers

The titles after them and the series have shown decline ever since but Gran Turismo didn't
Gran Turismo 4 obviously had lower sales numbers, but that got to do more with the fact that it wasn't as heavily bundled in the US.. in Europe it actually sold more than Gran Turismo 3

Furthermore, Gran Turismo 5: Prolouge didn't show any signs of decline in the popularity of the franchise with 1 million pre orders in Europe and selling 4.65 million (and counting) to date.... Did you know that Gran Turismo 3 had an opening week of 1 million in the US and back then it was considering the biggest openining ever? and let me remind you it was heavily bundled

I actually think Gran Turismo 5 has a chance to be just as big if not a little bit bigger than Gran Turismo 3

Doubtful.

I think it'll sell quite a bit more, lifetime. Thanks to the internet being more prevalent in marketing the GT series has since become ridiculously overhyped compared to the hype that the previous titles got. I expect on every motorsport show, or at least mentioned across the globe. They managed to fit in some talk about the PS3 the other day during the F1, also a lot of mainstream motorsport shows have specials along the likes of "GT5 vs real life".

Most motorsport news sites often even do news on GT5... pretty much everyone involved in or interested in motorsport KNOWS that GT5 is going to be the definitive racing game. Including all the dedicated players of Forza on the 360.

No, it will be 2nd to GT3.

Bolded: so 90% (30mil) of current PS3 userbase are the buyers of hardcore/flagship franchises.

-i didnt question GT5's success (6-9mil is pretty much guarantee base on your 1st/3rd point), I was merely questioning the long legs required to reach previous iterations LTDs by considering the current characteristics of this generation.

-The only HD games that seems to have extremely long legs are the FPS titles

-This generation, the racing genre have plenty of "GT quality" games available now & after the GT is released.

Sorry, I jumbled my second bullet because I was trying to relate back to the PS2 era so much:

I meant to say it's the first 20% of your install base that does most of your hardcore software purchasing (i.e. for the PS2, it was the first 20-30mil owners). Apologies for not making that clear at all the first time around.

So, if we just take ~40mil for the PS3's install base at the end of the year, we're looking at the first 20% making most of GT5's purchases - i.e. a significant proportion of those first ~8mil users will buy the game, and then the rest will be made up by a small part of the remaining 80% of the install base (purely for example's sake, say 5mil of the first 8mil PS3 owners buy GT5, and then 4mil of the next 32mil PS3 owners buy GT5).

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Prologue hasn't shown legs? It's a 2 year old demo yet it sold 15k physical copies last week (and perhaps a thousand or two digital downloads), so it's selling the same weekly as some big titles that came out in late 2009.

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What are all these games that are "GT quality" then? I can only think of Forza 2/3, and even then they won't match GT5's critical reception. That's all ultimately irrelevant though, because it's not just Gran Turismo's quality that the franchise has going for it - its greatest weapon is its brand strength.

The userbase argument is invalid for GT since GT > GT2 and GT3 > GT4.

You do have a valid argument for development time and delays and such. I think because of this it could be the lowest selling GT game. I still think it'll do very well and probably outsell MW2 PS3 but I don't know if it'll surpass GT2 which is the lowest selling I think.