Darthdevidem, Noobie:

Retail-preorders is the number of units Sony will ship to stores (in this case in Europe). Sony could NEVER know the number of units preordered by gamers as they´d have to ask every single store for that. Companies always talk about the number of units they´ll ship to stores not the amount of units gamers preordered... 

I didn´t write my post because I want anything to look bad, but its obvious they are talking about retail preorders. 

Yes, but retailers will start taking pre-orders long before they actually order their copies of the game, so they will know roughly how many copies to pre-order, and if there are 1m pre-orders, it shows that this game will sell well in EU, and will probably be in the top few selling PS3 games for now

That completely depends on the kind of game we are talking about - this is GT5, therefore many gamers will preorder it because it really is a core game; only true core gamers will buy a copy of a demo version of a game and most preorders come from core gamers - the percentage of preorders increases the more hardcore a game is.

I still agree, though, that retailers have a good idea of how good a game will sell - I just wanted to say that these are clearly retail preorders - if those were preorders by customers that would mean 1/4 of all European PS3 owners preordered the game, which is insane - additionally the game should sell after week one and I don´t think it will sell 2 million copies with a 4.5 million install base... (keep in mind, we have "Others" numbers, Sony is solely talking about Europe, therefore the install base is even smaller).

In general you shouldn´t trust statements of companies 100% if they advertise their games - it is also possible Sony is adding the bundled versions of the game to this number.

Gran Turismo 4 sold 5 million copies in "Other" regions - I´d expect the prologue version to sell less than half of this. Additionally the install base is much smaller, so I´d expect the main (!) game (not the prologue version) to sell a maximum of 3 million copies in Europe (3.5 million in total "Others") as this would be in line with the decreases of Nintendo games during the N64 / GC era - significantly smaller install base means less software sales, therefore 3 million for the main game seems reasonable to me. For the prologue version, I don´t have a clue but don´t expect it to be much higher than 1 million. Of course I could be wrong.

@ louie, I agree with what you say, but this game is half price, and can be got even cheaper than that in some places, which will have boosted its sales. On top of that, it does have quite a lot of content, with 60 cars, 6 tracks, online multiplayer, offline multiplayer, it is not as bad as everyone says, and is certainly more fully equiped than the Japanese version
In sales terms I think it can break 2.5m including downloads, which is pretty good, and I expect the main game to sell close to 7-8m ww when it comes out early next year, as the PS3 install base in Others will be close to 9-10m so 3-4m is perfectly possible, that is how much EU loves this game, and America should contribute too

I agree. 3-4 million for the main game is possible, I just don´t know about the prologue version. Well, we´ll see. I´m quite sure I´ll only buy the full version, though

I think GT5P will sell 2.0M life time sales world wide, also I believe the PS3 would be around 90k when GT5 bundle is released in OTHERS, maybe 120k at most.

Ps3 will do around 100,000 at most when it comes. (i wonder if Nintendo will do what they did when Dmc4 came out in the U.s. and throw out over 200,000 Wii's to counterattack a huge game?)

Ps3 is only like 1 million away from 360 overall. Expect this game to obliterate 360 once it comes! (considering that the 360 is selling Ps2 current like numbers now which is kind of sad.)

PS3 is already doing around 80k for Other.. or u mean PS3 will do 80k for just UK.? and isn't GT5 Prologue bunde is getting release across the entire region.

I seen an ad for the game when watching TV not long ago and the impression was amazing, says 'In-game footage' (which it is) and it looks incredible!

I think a lot of racing fans will be swayed by these ad's and buy a PS3 for the game :D