Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sales prediction

[Nuvendil]

curl-6 said:

Nuvendil said:

Those tastes were not established or noted really when Oblivion exploded onto the scene, doubling the sales of Morrowind.  And Oblivion wasn't all that edgy really at all.  

And as I said, a 1.5 million is what I expect.  But I think that could be a stepping stone to 2 million and beyond as the series goes on, with mainline Xenoblade being a lower selling franchise probably than Xenoblade X.

As I recall, (I was still in high school at the time) Oblivion very much rode the wave of the "Wow, HD/next gen/biggest most immersive world ever/you can go anywhere do anything" hype. But that was a long time ago; 2007 and onwards established a trend of AAA Western games being gritty, bombastic, etc and Bethesda continues to successfully tap into this.

If they made a XCX sequel with a better story, less padding, less convoluted/more streamlined mechanics, and very strong marketing, than that I can absolutely see that hitting 2.5 million. For here and now with XB2 though, I think those kind of numbers out of reach for the moment.

Bolded: don't even think that would need doing at all.
Italics:  This on the other hand, is THE key.  More than literally every other thing you listed.  Honestly, XCX should have cruised by 1mil with ease even on the Wii U.  That it failed to do so is a catastrophic failure on Nintendo's part.  The game had so many aspects that appealed to the mainstream it should have at least outsold the first.