Don't stop now, Fire Emblem, you might actually manage to get past the third party record and not disgrace yourself.

Uhhh, a game by Intelligent Systems, especially Fire Emblem, would not be considered third party, so I don't think it surpassing the third party record would mean anything.

High profile Nintendo first party games like Fire Emblem almost always outsell every third party game on the system. Obviously if it surpasses the third party record it doesn't mean anything, but if it doesn't, that's a horrible sign. Especially for a franchise like Fire Emblem that gets most of its sales first week and thus can't just say that legs will carry it or that it's an evergreen title. If Fire Emblem doesn't do well first week, it just won't do well, period. So if it can't even surpass the pitiful records of the third party games, that's disgraceful for an IP that typically sells a million or more.

Lets go FE! Get them 20+ Points!

Nowadays, Fire Emblem has become an IP that does much more in the West than in Japan. Before Prime Day came in, it was the top selling game on Amazon, it was even in the top 5 right behind those PlayStation Store gift cards. Fates and Awakening sold close to 1 million copies in North America alone. Even Shadows of Valentia sold better or equal in the U.S. as it did in Japan. Meanwhile, Fates and Awakening they didn't even crack 600k over there. Hell, no Fire Emblem game has cracked 600k in Japan since the first game on the SNES. Fates and Awakening were the first games to even crack 500k since the SNES games.

As far as selling a million or more, that's not going to be an issue in the slightest.  Even if it doesn't reach the same levels of sales as Awakening and Fates in Japan, it should still pass the GBA and DS games without any issues. Furthermore, whatever it's losing in Japan, should be more than made up in the Western regions. 

Bottom line: Three Houses is going to do just fine.

I certainly hope so, it's among my favorite franchises and I've absolutely loved how it finally got its chance to thrive in the post-Awakening era. It'd really suck to see it come crashing down again. Part of it is that very few games in Japan seem to even crack a million nowadays. The only game ever to crack 10 million was the original Pokemon Red/Green. The only games to crack 5 million have been certain Pokemon games and certain Monster Hunter games, and Animal Crossing. The only other games to cross a million have been certain Square Enix games and certain system exclusives. It just doesn't happen all that often, so when the US starts buying a game by the millions, Japan usually doesn't compete on sales. Nonetheless, while the series did peak at a very low ceiling in Japan on the SNES, it also always had a very high basement, never falling below a few hundred thousand. Japanese Fire Emblem fans were always very loyal and helped keep the series alive during the difficult era from Path of Radiance up until Awakening. So to see them look like they might not even break 200k, on a very successful system, it's just sad to me as a longtime FE fan, like the longtime Japanese fans are losing interest somehow. I can't imagine why that would happen. While it has become a bit easier, it also has modes that are harder than ever, and while it has done some things to appeal to Western fans, it's done so by arguably becoming more Japanese (read, more anime inspired) than ever.

So sure, Three Houses will probably be fine (it fucking better be, it looks awesome) I'm still worried about Japanese FE fans. But if Amazon is showing it doing fine, then it's probably just a matter of COMG declining faster than I expected. Which is weird to me, for this game, given that COMG seemed to me to attract a niche audience that would tend to like Fire Emblem, so I'd have thought that Fire Emblem would have been immune to the COMG decline. Makes me think maybe COMG has lost some of its core demographic.

3H will have absolutely no issue breaking 200k in Japan.

First week though? I mean I know Switch games tend to have good ratios, but even at a 1:2000 ratio, 80 points is just 160k. Sure it'll get more before launch, but we have about a week left, so I'm not confident it'll get to 100 points. Probably over its lifetime it'll leg out well past 200k, but that I even have to think about it is just a bit jarring. If the ratio is closer to 1:1000, it'll probably only just barely leg past 200k. Again, maybe it'll get more points, maybe the ratio will be good, and maybe COMG is just becoming that irrelevant, but the numbers have really surprised me.

The vouchers will mess things up for a while. Astral Chain is #9 on the eshop and it’s not even listed here.

Sales will skew towards digital until they end that program.