Your joking right.  You think Gears is a franchise along the lines of Halo and GTA.  I mean if you want to discredit those 2 franchises that much then be my guest but I didn't say it haha. 

No doubt Gears 2 is a big franchise and yes 4 million in 2 weeks is doable but its very improbable.  Excuse me for being skeptical.  I don't deny it can happen but I'm not going to openly go along with it based off this haha.  As I said I hope it does that number because it shows just how big holidays will be this year that games that aren't even the largest franchises in gaming can do numbers like that.

Zucas, if you saw an aggreggate system that predicted sales numbers accurately, 100% of the time, wouldn't you use it and tell others about it?

I have a job in the video games industry for this very thing. I began to post XBLA extrapolations a year ago, and got so accurate at it, game companies started offering me jobs - including Microsoft themself. It's the same system for retail.

You can doubt all you want, and I'd love to suspect the numbers too, but everything I've seen points to Gears of War 2 being nestled in between Grand Theft Auto IV and Halo 3 in terms of concurrent users on opening day. They could obviously change: GeoW could be more frontloaded, and cut some of the numbers off. The number of users could be over-tracked due to the nature of Gears, but for everything I can and will argue, the numbers have always made sense.

It's not like I'm comparing games from vastly different timeframes: Gears of War 2 has roughly 4.0 times the Day-0 users Fable 2 does. So why is it illogical to think that Gears 2 may sell around 3 times as many units in the same time period?

And it's fine to be skeptical. But I'm merely a mouthpiece for the data I see. I'm not skewing Gears numbers to say one thing or another. I am merely presenting the facts, and showing where the data is trending toward.

As I said, some people are REALLY afraid of  heights...

Gears is a huge franchise but it's hard for me to think GTA IV and Halo level on the 360.  However I said a few weeks ago that Gears 2 may be able to do this for the said reason of an inflated holiday season due to the growth of the industry.  That it might be able to open to Halo or GTA like numbers because of this.  I said that a couple of weeks ago before any of this data came out just to present my usual credentials. 

So why is it so bad for me to be skeptical... even of my own predictions that are similar to this that precede yours.  All I'm trying to say is people are going to be skeptical when they don't understand but I fully understand and still am skeptical... similar to the bolded part you said just so we can find some common ground on this.

You have to know something, when you talk about Halo, GTA. Those are franchises that are from previous gen and a lot older than Gears. You are putting a lot of faith on a 2 year old game. This is Gears 2, not 3. If it was 3, it probably will sell a lot more because of the previous two games just like Halo did.

This.

I hate the fact that I'm broke and can't buy my 360 (and Gears 2 of course) now, I can't even buy any games or luxury things until at least mid March, damn this goddamn economy.

Oh Faye, lol. The question isn't IF it will sell a shitload. It's if it will sell said shitload in week 1 or 2.

Yes yes, my bad. I meant for week 1. I know it will sell a lot and sell more than the first Gears. Just wanted to point that out +2 days for the first week. Week 2 will likely be the better week for Gears 2 in sales terms.

faye, and I can say that using the same reasoning the following games shouldn't of debuted like they did:

Halo 2 (3.3m units week-1 when H1 debuted with under 200k copies)
Resident Evil 2 (1.3m units week-1 in Japan alone, which was 10x what RE1 sold on week-1 and outsold RE1's entire LTD cume in Japan in 3 days)
Metal Gear Solid 2 (450k units week-1 in Japan alone, which was double MGS1, and on an entirely different system, too)
Kingdom Hearts 2 (Outsold entire Japanese LTD of predecessor in 3 days)
Monster Hunter Portable 2 (Again, outsold predecessor's LTD in 3 days)
Onimusha 2 (nearly outsold JP LTD of predecessor in it's first week)

Point is, it happens, given the right time, and following a superb game that had a major cult following.