Everyone knows impressive is relative term and even subjective, but still you had to wrote this "You probably don't really understand what impressive means. Any time something does better than it ever did before it is impressive, it doesn't matter if the past performance was modest or excellent." Doesn't really translate to being a relative term, does it? Seems like an absolute definition to me although there's much more to take into account. 

I don't really see much value in comparing sales to a game that was released in 2001. And with a big hyped mainstream blockbuster game like MGS I tend to compare it with other games, not only previous MGS titles, so I thought it would beat Witcher III (best game this year so far imo).

I don't know why you made a conclusion that I don't have positive view on MGS sales. It did good, no question about it, I don't think anyone's underwhelmed here. I wasn't expecting 50/50 split of course, but I expected it to be a bit closer with Ground Zeroes being free with gold a while back and split between PS4 and X1 isn't that huge in UK. There just doesn't seem to be enough interest for MGS amongs xbox gamers. I don't know why I'm surprised tho, I'm not interested in it myself and I don't know anyone who bough GZ or Phantom Pain.

OK fair enough, I can see how you can interpret that as being absolute. By "best" I mean best performance trying as hard as you can. So in that context improvement is always genuine and substantial.

Why would you compare MGS with The Witcher though? Totally different games with very different sorts of appeal, and in the case of MGS a well established fanbase on its principle platform which has been very stable for 3 generations. The Witcher has known pedigree as a top quality game series, but has never been on PS platforms. It's got somewhat of an Elder Scrolls vibe to it, being a solo, action fantasy RPG, and Elder Scrolls has done very well on the PS platform in its 2 single player outings to date, so the PS audience has been somewhat primed for The Witcher.

I meant you don't have a positive view on sales for the Xb one version, not over all. So the falling short of your expectations for that platform, which seem to have been a bit unrealistic in retrospect, would naturally cause you to think a bit less of the sales performance over all. Having low-ish expectations for the Xb one version sales makes you more inclined to view the over all sales more positively. As you noted, among your circle of Xb one gamers there's zero interest in MGS5, and that should have informed your expectations somewhat. Interestingly I only personally know 2 people with a Xb one and both of them bought MGS5 day one and love it. One guy was PS2-->360-->Xb one, the other guy has been Xbox since the 6th generation.

Eh not really, if I was to draw conclusions from my xbox friends and myself and ps4 friends I'd say ps4 gamers buy only NHL and COD and xbox gamers don't like Halo or COD :)

Setting your expectations low makes a strong impression more likely, check. But then again, is the split in US will be the same as UK I simply can't see it impressive. And I bet Konami will also see it as lost potential sales for X1 audience. I'll take my words back if PS4 sales are unusually high of course and X1 sales are significant despite a huge split. Now, let us lay this case to rest.

I agree we've talked this to a point of conclusion.

But

If you want to get a sense of what would have been a realistic expectation for week 1 MGSV on Xb one in the UK, you could look at the one full Metal Gear game that did release on 360 and PS3 last gen to get a feel for the Xbox fanbase's interest in MG games (Metal Gear Rising). Now that game sold realitively low numbers on both platforms, but the ratios are interesting.

When you work out the ratio of  the ratio of sales to the ratio of install base for week 1 of MGR:R and MGS5 respectively you actually find that they are very similar. The ratio of ratios for MGR:R is 2.4, the ratio of ratios for MGSV is 2.6. In this instance 2.4 is better than 2.6. But considering the switch back to PS4 that's happened in this early part of the generation coming that close to the relative performance of MGR:R means MGSV sales in the UK on Xb one are pretty much right on where you would expect them to be without something intervening to miraculously make MG appeal to Xbox gamers.

So going off topic slightly, since you brought up the USA. If you want to get a sense of what would be reasonable for MGSV in the USA we can do the same exercise. Interestingly MGR:R week 1 did worse (relative to install base) on 360 in the USA compared to the 360 in the UK. So your expectations for USA should be that MGSV will do worse on Xb one relative to install base than it has in the UK or at best similar to the UK. What will be impressive is if MGSV does better in the USA on Xb one than in the UK.  For argument's sake let's take the UK Xb one and PS4 sales MGSV and multiply them up to the US install base and use that as a guess for what week 1 in the USA will be for these two consoles. It gives an aggregate week 1 between these two consoles of ~642.5K, with PS4 getting 477.2K and Xb one getting 165.3K Head to head market share-wise that's 74.2% for PS4 and 25.8% for Xb one. But if we use MGRR as a guide, and assume an aggregate of 642.5K for MGSV week 1 we should expect Xb one sales to be slightly lower than 165.3K at justy above 157K and PS4 to be just below 486K. So if you want to re-set your expectations for how MGSV will do on XB one relative to PS4, then mid-20s head to head market share is in line with expectations. low 20s or teens would be below expectations, high 20s or 30s would be above expectations. A 40% head to head market share for MGSV on Xb one in the USA would be amazing. It's also somewhat backed up with Ground Zeroes which had a head to head market share of 76% and 24% in the USA. So all things point to a very similar result in the USA as the UK, and you should not be disappointed if that's the sort of market share Xb one gets for this game, in the USA. If MGSV gets into the 30% range week 1 in the USA on Xb one I promise I will use the "i" word.

And some xbox fans wonder why they dont get japaneset games like Akiba Strip or Bikini Samurai squad. If a japanese AAA title like MGS5 isnt selling so hot on XOne why should niche devoper release their games for xbox in the first place.?