Nobody I know hasn't even heard of God of War. My belief is that the franchise started too late in the PS2 generation

Actually this has given me an idea, thx to this I can construct a similar thread about Mass effect 2 which is more fitting for this kind of thread.

I think its 1.66m after 3 weeks excluding Japan. Had it been released in November -December 2009 the sales would have been 2.5-2.8m after 3 weeks.

With Xbox exclusives or timed exclusives is a risky business these days. ME2 sold well but not what people would expect for a highly critically acclaimed game. Honest people will admit it. Metro 2033 sales are a joke. 360 version of FF13 sold better than anyone expected. Releasing a game on both consoles saved the sales otherwise we would have a flop like SO4.

GOW1 4-week Sales (No weekly sales figures for Others): 387 026 (~600,000 with Others I would estimate)
GOW2 4-week Sales: 1 242 793
GOW3 4-week Sales (only 2 Japan weeks): 1 801 387

What we can see from this is, that sequels are more front-heavy than new IPs (hardly a surprise), but GOW3 is comfortably outselling GOW2 (which does suit the comparison better, seeing as we're looking at a title that would be more front-heavy).
GOW3 should do just fine. GOW3 is outselling Uncharted 2 by about 300,000 (or 20%) over the same period of time, and Uncharted 2 even launched in the holiday season. I imagine GOW3 will have comparable legs, so 4 million should be almost guaranteed for it now, and 5+ million is most certainly possible.

In the UK It's the same as killzone, not many people knew about the God Of War series that I knew of. First I heard of it was when GoW 3 was announced and people were hyping it up.

Very little advertising in the UK, no hype up until launch and no deal on in the supermarkets. One of the reasons MW2 had such huge first day sales in the UK was the hype and the supermarkets selling it for £26, I didn't even really want MW2 but queued at 7am in the supermarket for it!

If MW2 had the same advertising, price and marketting that GOW 3 had in the UK I think that would have had similar less than amazing sales.

God of War III sales is huge... more than 40% over God of War II.

HUGE SALES!!! 4.5-5.0M LTD!!!

Even if the sales were low,which they aren't, I wouldnt care because I played the game and I consider it to be great. Ico didnt sell .Does that make it a bad game? I don't think so ;) All true gamers remember it to this day. And that's what matters

also whats interesting is that GoW3's done what it has with less of an install base that GoW2 had

cos kratos scared them away....:)
on topic i think that the god of war sales are pretty good considering what kind of game it is

the sales are just fine. Not every game is going to be a 10-20 million seller.