Hopefully higher than those of SMG :(

That's innacurate.  It sold 1.2 million over the entire life of the Gamecube, not right away.  Hardware sales increased with the software sales.  It's still impressive (the best selling Gamecube game in Japan).

I'll say 500K.  Smash is bigger than Mario in Japan on home consoles, but home console games just don't make that big a splash anymore in Japan week 1.

i say 400k

It's not innacurate. When I played Super Smash Bros 64 and heard that Smash bros Melee was coming out, I had to grab it. I turned down a PS2 and asked for a gamecube for that one reason alone.

Now you have an base for Smash Bros that is over a million people, and those are the ones who own it just to play with their buddies IRL. If you think about it, the number of people who are Smash bros fans could be twice that(or at least half again that amount), with each owner having an average of 1 buddy who doesn't own a gamecube but still plays on their friend's system (i know I did that for a while and there are still a couple people who play it on friend's consoles)

Since you now have online play announced, this means that everyone can play against people around the world. which means that it's not just your buddies who are potential competitors, but everyone on the earth. People will want to get out ASAP to get the game, even if they need to get the Wii console in order to play it too, in order to make sure they don't get left behind by the rest of the competition.

It's the same reason Halo 3 sold so well on the first day. Not JUST because of the hype, but because its big feature is the online competition aspect. People get it as early as possible to stay competitive, and I think you'll see the same thing happen with Brawl.

There are also a TON of other features that have been announced. A number of which will be drawing interest from people who may not even own smash bros melee right now.

I might have overestimated at being over 1 million, but i'm quite confident it will sell closer to that than 500,000 

1 million

First of all, I wasn't saying his prediction was inaccurate, I was saying his judgement that it sold 1.2 million copies on a system with 1.6 million users was inaccurate.

Second, you make a lot of assumptions about the Wii.  SMG did worse than SMS on week 1 despite having roughly 2.5 times the userbase.  Increased userbase doesn't mean much. The fanbase for games doesn't change very often between generations.  

Third, Online play means very little in Japan on consoles.  The reason the DS does so well in Japan isn't its online games, but its download and play multiplayer.  Japan is a small country, and it's very easy to get around.  Online play will never be a big deal to them like it is to us.   Nor are the Japanese the competitive gamers you think they are.  You are applying American market bias to justify Japanese sales predictions.

Dolla Dolla, the combination of Full Throttle "The Bar", and Dr. Evil has resulted in the loving of you, by me.

Edit: On topic of course, my prediction is 600k for the first week.

Given the facts that Melee was more popular than Sunshine, that the Wii will have an even larger installed base than when Galaxy came out, and that Galaxy sold about 250K week one, I'd give Brawl an estimate of about 500K in its first week in Japan.

431,000

I don't want to be disappointed again like I was for SMG (the japanese sales, not the game itself.)