txrattlesnake said:
"The user base for the PlayStation 2 version was truncated initially because of limited sales of the PlayStation 2s hard drive and network adapters that were needed for the game.[77] The Japanese release of Rise of the Zilart was the number one selling game when it debuted with 90,000 copies sold in the first week.[77] The Final Fantasy XI All-in-One Pack was number 36 and Wings of the Goddess was number 40 on the top 50 best-selling Xbox 360 games in Japan as of December 2007.[78] For the April–September 2004 financial period, Square Enix saw online gaming, particularly Final Fantasy XI, sales increase by 101 percent and operating profit increase by 230.9 percent.[79] Revenues held steady from subscription services in the summer of 2006; in the fall however, Square acknowledged that online subscription revenues were "unsatisfactory", despite the steady performance of Final Fantasy XI.[80][81] In December 2002, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada announced that there were over 200,000 subscribers to Final Fantasy XI, allowing the company to break even and start making a profit.[82] There were between 200,000 and 300,000 active players daily in 2006.[83] As of August 14, 2006 the Xbox 360 version was the sixth most played game on Xbox Live.[84]" http://www.answers.com/topic/final-fantasy-xi
"Mr. Sundi then presented his audience with some statistics on what platforms were being used by which territories as well as server performance. The Japanese audience is about 55% of the entire userbase and play the game on the PS2 in a 2:1 ratio compared against the PC version. North America and European Union make up the remaining 45% and prefer the PC version, with a reversed ratio of 1:2. 1.6 million individual characters are registered in the game with around 200,000 to 300,000 active users daily at 130,000 to 150,000 simultaneous connections." http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060324/woodard_01.shtml
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Well, that info provides for a reasonable method for estimating the Japanese PS2 sales. If we assume that there are an average of 2 characters per player, then 2 million characters would mean 1 million copies sold worldwide across all platforms. If we go with Mr. Sundi's figures of 55% of all FF XI players are in Japan, and Japanese players prefer the PS2 version by a 2:1 ratio, then 37% of all FF XI players are Japanese PS2 players. So 1 million copies worldwide across all platforms would translate to 370k PS2 copies in Japan.
That's more than 150k, but still a LONG way from 2 million.
Will you concede that there have not been 2 million PS2 copies of FF XI sold in Japan?