All but a handful of games (GTA, Pokemon, CoD?) need those discounts to hit that number.  The difference here compared to standard AAA game sitautions is that Square might hit their 10 million number where other AAA games definitely won't.

Point taken. But not every AAA game has the developer come out and say, "We need to sell 10M to break even." either.

If VGChartz numbers are to be believed, Final Fantasy 13 actually had a stronger first week if you account for the fact that the game didn't have a simultanious world-wide release like 15 did. 

13 sold about 7.5M (again, if VGChartz numbers are right). 

The rise of digital sales helps a bit, but I have a bad feeling about this.

I agree, and ultimately this is all on Square for taking 10 years to put the damn thing out.  Fact that they are only about 4 million away from their target without putting out their inevitable packaged edition with all the DLC later, and a potential PC port, or a potential Switch port, makes me more optimistic than pessimistic that they will hit that target.

Square Enix never said they needed 10 million to break even lol

Yes they did. 10 years of hype needs 10mil sales to break even. Do you math bro?  

Jokes aside people get those statements mixed up all the time. I remember Hyrule Warriors developer said the same thing (1mil) and everyone went crazy with that. (At least it did hit that figure thanks to US)

to be fair, they didn't say they needed to sell 10 million to be profitable and I doubt they also meant that those 10 million would be at full price

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-15-director-clarifies-10-million-sal/1100-6436227/

Uhm. All companies brag about their shipments. It's pretty normal. That's is their sales as a company. They don't get any profit from the sales of the retailers obviously they will brag about their shipments. That's why when their is a finanacial report you always see Shipments. Also, as Boutros said the data for the copies sold to consumer is not availabe yet worldwide. SE don't have the complete data yet. You cannot provide numbers when it's not complete do you? and the fact that you cannot get an accurate data for the copies sold to the consumer because of the asian market and the middle east. 

If they added more shipments then it means retailers asked for more copies of the game. It means there is a demand for the game. 1 Million in just 1 and half month, yes people it's only 1 month and half. FFXV was released on Nov. 29. Having another shipment for another milion means it has a demand. I don't get why people discredit shipments. Shipments are sold regardless and profit for the Game developers which is most important. 

Thanks for the links to the clarification. Never saw those.

Anyway. Squarenix's balance sheet and P&L look healthy enough, though I'm curious to what extent their digital entertainment division is bouyed by mobile games and Western developers. 

I think FFXV could be something of a last hurrah for Squarenix. Ten years of devlopment. Difficulty with in-house engine. What I preceive as weak sales relative to expectations (I know at this point that most disagree with me here ^_^). 

Given the difficulty that they've had simply getting FFXV and KHIII to market, I don't think it's surprising the direction they've been going in recently. Episodic stuff like Hitman and Life is Strange, the FFVII remake being at least somewhat episodic in nature and being built in Unreal, etc. 

I think the days of big budget, completely in house JRPGs might be coming to an end. 

Bring on XVI, with a clear vision this time.

I'm no retail expert, but can't retailers return unsold merchandise? Not saying that's what is happening here, but I thought in most cases, retailers could send stuff back to manufacturers.