Think about it this way, there is a point of optimisation where your pricepoint, your marketing and your sales all come together to give you

1) The best market exposure
and
2) The best return on investment.

I don't know what the parameters should be set at, but I know that a game like Uncharted can get and deserves much more exposure for one if the parameters were set a little bit differently.

More games can suffer temporarily, until Uncharted becomes the flagship it is meant to be. Then pump out the other games of lesser appeal with your added profit.

I must say that Sony did a pretty good job here in Italy with Uncharted.
In Milan there were a lot of banners in the subway, and in the city centre in general.
A friend of mine, that went in Spain, said that there were a lot of advertisement also over there.

Probably this was the first game that was marketed A LOT by Sony, apart from GT5 and Fifa.

I think they do sell very well already, UC3 will easily reach 6 mil this year, may go on to do 7. Uncharted 2 isn't so far behind that and considering the first game came out when PS3s user base was vastly smaller than it is now, it also did very well. I did a LOT of posters for UC3 here in London and the odd trailer now and then but you're right, the franchise has such a broad appeal and can look insanely good in trailers as they're so cinematic and beautiful, so the potential is not being reached. I think there are a few issues here:

1) Funding. Sony publish a megaton of games, especially last year. They had to divide large sums of money between 5 or 6 major releases last year, the implications of this are obvious.

2) Communication. Sony just isn't good at marketing, and although they've improved in recent years, it's still not enough to really catch peoples attention.

3) Competition. Uncharted on PS3 is a november release, last year it went up against BF3 and MW3. Those games alone had a combined marketing budget of 200 million. This goes back to 1; Sony just can't afford to compete with that.

Thanks for the promotion :P

And that's where I don't agree CGI. It does, actually it has the umf to grossly surpass them all. But maybe I just see a completely different appeal than alot on a video game forum. I'm looking at it from a movie-success point of view, on that could attract a large clientele for a shorter more succint experience.

Just my 2 cents.

Of course Uncharted has the potential to sell 6 million copies. Sony just needs to keep the userbase solid and release the game at a time when it is large enough to provide sales then market the crap out of it. Old IP's are easier to sell than new IPs, just look at Nintendos existence and look at Microsoft with Halo. Sony has a ton of characters, but they need them to become mainstays to sell those types of numbers. They need to keep the genres fresh and they need another platformer with a Crash Bandicoot edge that can gather in the children. There was a time when Crash Bandicoot could sell in a killer fashion...and I mean more than Gears of War type sales. Actually yes, I would bet on it that Crash Bandicoot in its hey day sold more than Gears.

Uncharted is pretty big, but it should really be a 10 million selling franchise imo

Uncharted 3 sales are very strong and tracking ahead of U2 when you align launches....
They did something right.

Well I'll tell you something CGI, the moment I saw Andre's video, I was already on kijiji looking for a used PS3.
Once that was done, I was on my way to Future Shop.

Am I so different than your average consumer?