Let's see, the first week usually makes up around 50% of the first three months.
Sony preorders are something fierce, and it drops right in the middle of a holiday period.

Aside:

"No results found for biggest console launches first week."

Thanks bing.

Anyway, after using google, I've found that the biggest console launches are around 1.2-1.5m first week.
Holidays are roughly double a three month period of normal sales. So, if it launches at 2m, then it should do ~4 million on top of that during the next 3 months, for a total of 5-7m through february or march.

That would be quarter 1.
Sony is looking at around 13-16m console sales for FY 2013 (this is reported by Sony itself, which is based on production and demand by retailers, whom are all out of stock)

It then has 9 months -through the end of september-, which should be roughly ~2m per 3 months, which equals 150k a week. Easily doable. We can predict a lower threshold of around 11-12m

To get to 15-16, at minimum it will have to sell around 8m in the first three months, leading to ~800k per month (185k per week) for the rest of the year.

I have to say, that's going to be hard. It's going to need some massive titles, or retailer discounts in the first year to do that.

Two completely different situations.

Back then there was a lot of bullshit spread around by Sony especially about the potential processing power the PS3 had. It was marketed as the next best thing since sliced bread. And then came the delays and rumours etc. Once they released the price of the console it pretty much sealed the deal. They continued with their PR spin though.

This time around I'm noticing much less bullshit especially from Sony. There was a bit of crap from MS but nothing major and none of it stuck.

So yeah it seems like the days of getting super hyped or misled about the potential of consoles are gone. Neither manufacturer has really even bothered. With that in mind everybody is more realistic about expectations and theres good reasons for the predictions currently going around. Its not just based on wishful thinking.