I guess, but with the inevitable low weeks ahead before christmas (and there will be many if they don't price cut) it seems a tad pointless :

Then again, NPD really is on lockdown, and VGC doesn't exist to Sony, so they might not have any low numbers to have to refute ..

Lol 

I really should've left 'pre-order' out of that sentence!

NPD numbers or not, Sony NPD response or not, I still see the US media continuing their quest to make US gloom and doom articles based on JPN sales.

So yeah, in the end this whole thing may end up being totally pointless.

Hopefully it at least hits my prediction of first weeks sales of 214k. (I believe that prediction was for the FEB bundle week + 2/22 launch week)

Wasn't the First Edition Bundle pre-order only anyways?

Yes but Sony is spending more money on marketing the vita than any other console they have ever realeased, along with the 2nd most launch titles of any console launch (at least I read somewhere that was the case), also, I like how you added the "/sarcasm" because it wasn't ABUNDANTLY clear you were being sarcastic /sarcasm

IMO this really depends on how well day 1/week 1 sales go ...

I suspect that they will need week 1 sales around 400,000 units to hit this milestone because sales are going to fall rapidly; as they do with most launches. At around 350,000 there will (probably) be a viable shipped vs. sold argument, but at under 300,000 they would fall embarassingly short.

I don't know how this will turn out, but my expectations are pretty low after what I heard/saw at Walmart on launch day.

You know, the Vita really isn't performing that poorly in Japan. Take the sales from month two (, from the 16th of January (week 6-9), they're all outside of the holiday season. It's sold a steady 16,000 units every single week. In weeks 6 to 9, the 3DS sold a total of 89,000, or 22,000 a week.

The Vita isn't having an amazing launch, but it's really not performing a lot worse than the 3DS did. If Sony plays things right, the Vita has every chance of being as great a success in Japan as the PsP was.

I really hope that this is simply aiming low in order to say "look how much it exceeded expectations" and thereby improve sales somehow....

... that's a very odd stance to take though. So what you are saying is that the Vita isn't doing too bad because it's performing only around 75% as well as a system that required an incredibly hefty price cut to bring sales up to a good level. The 3DS is not a good indicator, it was struggling with sales until the price cut. In fact all the doom and gloom articles about the Vita were about the 3DS until it got a price cut. So the Vita doing worse than a system that was having difficulties really isn't a good sign.

Especially considering the Vita had what most people consider to be a very strong launch line up whereas most people consider the 3DS to have had a weak launch line up. Also I think nearly everyone would agree that at the same price point the Vita is definitely better value for money simply in terms of hardware.