It'll overtake Halo's sales easily by May 9, 2008 tops (2 months after launch).

1st week? If the 1 million preorders were a couple months ago, then EASILY 2 million first week (if they were only NA). 4 million by the end of the month (which will only have 3 weeks remaining upon release).

Having 1 million pre-orders doesn't mean 1 million people are getting their game the first week. Only about 60 percent pick up their pre-orders in the first week at Gamestop. But of course I guess people that didn't pre-order and pick up the game make up for it.

I'm predicting 1.9 million for the first week in America.

These are some huge predictions.

I think it will be tough to get 2.5 million for both regions.... more likely it will be 1-1.5 million for America and 0.5-1mil for others.

think its going to be 2.5-3 mil first week. Have to remember that in a lot of places pre-orders are not forced buys

Some of you guys are really setting yourselves up for disappointment with these exceedingly optimistic predictions. I really doubt that this game will outsell Halo's opening week, just because there's nowhere near as much hype surrounding Smash Brothers. Oh, there's plenty of INTERNET hype surrounding Smash Brothers, but that's not the same thing. If we've learned anything this generation, it should be that the opinions of the enthusiastic core gamers don't necessarily reflect that of the mass market.

Remember, the pattern for Wii games has been solid (but not spectacular) initial sales, then steady legs for many weeks afterwards. While Smash Brothers will have a good chance to win lifetime sales against Halo, expecting it to beat Halo's enormously frontloaded sales is just setting yourself up for disappointment. I think it's going to have a great debut in America, over 1m the first week - but that's not the same as Halo, not even close.

Meh.

2.5 million Worldwide. so 1.7 million between U.S. and Others, I don't really know where the 1 million pre-orders thing came from, and not that I don't trust ioi, but I'd like a link from a higher up at Gamestop or something.

im not to sure what will win but it will be very close

To all the people saying the million preorders was a while ago, it wasn't. ioi's post was on the 13th. it did say well over a million but I doubt there's been enough time to add too much to that.

@benoit, regarding others sales. Yea SMG didn't come close to a million there. But SMG also didn't come close to 800K in Japan. I think with others' larger userbase which will only keep growing till launch getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 800k-1million is definitely possible.

 It will almost definitely be ignored.. why? because between the release in Japan and release in Europe, over 5 months will have passed most likely, meaning it'd look pretty stupid if they came out and said 5 months after original launch, or 4 months after USA launch, "hey guys.. we beat halo week 1 sales"

All the Gamestops near me are now over 150 pre-orders for Smash. There are like 6,000 gamestops. So that is like 900000 from gamestop alone(again not every GS will be the same, but my 3 together had 510 pre-orders last time I checked, 2 days ago) also I did not look up my number for how many gamestops there are. I do remember that it was over 5k though.