...might be overtracked?  Direct figures from Sony's Yeonkyung Kim at GDC...

"As an example, he touched on last year's surprise sleeper RPG hit, Demon's Souls. The From-developed dungeon crawler was expected to be a tiny niche project, with initial shipments of 15,000 copies. Yet it became a breakout through word-of-mouth, with current sales closing in on a quarter of a million."

Japan numbers probably.. atleast thats what i get from reading the full article.

I wouldn't be surprised at all. Demonsss sssoulss does not come off as the type to sell the amount it is listed as....unless there are a lot of garr mofo gamers out there.

I thought that initially too, but upon checking JP trackers have it well below ~250k though... like 150-180k.  

It was never released to Wal-Mart and clearanced at Target. Leaving Gamestop, Amazon and Best Buy and Frys to pick up the rest of the copies... and the other stores.

Maybe ask Atlus directly? Hrm.

Why is it direct numbers?

those are shipped numbers for Japan, come he said he expected 15,000 copies sold.

Japan sales yes, but the game got imported from Asia like crazy. :edit: If we had data for others the game would probably be over 700k.

Demon's Souls for the PlayStation 3 leads off the extended listing at #11, with just over 150,000 units

It sold 150k in Oct in the US before the Holidays.

You want to rethink the whole overshiped thing.

Asia version was a different SKU though, if he was talking JP sales it wouldn't be included anyway (in either shipment accounting or independent tracking)?

Shipped though.. dont you think? Closing in on 250k could be 220 for all we know. And its not that far from 180k. And the article talks about the JP scene and how some JP dude thought the game was niche, but was closing in on 250k. And later goes on to talk about localization problems. I still think its JP numbers.