An unimpressive number in this day and age, nevermind that it's a remake of a game that sold ~10m copies lifetime with its original release and has been highly anticipated since around five years. Issues with shipments of physical copies provide a temporary explanation for this low figure, but digital sales in America and Europe have been getting ever closer to 50% for PS4 games, so in the long run the sales of the remake might really not get all that great, because the currently unknown impact of too low physical inventory is not necessarily significant.

The reason why the 3.5m figure is unimpressive is Final Fantasy XV. That game with its mixed expectations could muster 5m first week, but here we are talking about Final Fantasy VII with a modern facelift.

FFXV shipped a million retail in japan for its first day and did not sell through it until many months later when it hit bottom of the barrel prices. FF7R shipped a bit more than 700k and has already sold through all of that while also having a 30% digital ratio. FFXV was over shipped and that’s why it looks much more impressive 

FFXV was released in 2 platforms. FF7R only PS4. Hence the first sold more than the later in less time. Not worth buying a PS4 at this rate with next gen systems coming just for a game.

Yeah, the overshipment of Final Fantasy XV muddies the waters a bit. In the long run VII Remake should outpace XV, but it's still an unimpressive start in this day and age where blockbuster games routinely ship several million copies first week.

It’s still an exclusive JRPG shipping 3.5 million in 3 days in a non holiday quarter. If they have already sold all that they have shipped, I can’t fathom how this is unimpressive 

Because the qualifiers you use have the opposite effect of what you aim for. Being a JRPG doesn't mean anything here, because we are talking about Final Fantasy, not a Tales or an Atelier game. Likewise, exclusivity can hardly be viewed as something detrimental when the console that has been left out (Xbox One) doesn't have much of a JRPG audience, so that's not a real loss.

Also, when I say unimpressive, I don't mean bad or weak. It's along the lines of "FF VII shipped 3.5m first week. That's it? Okay."

I believe that in the UK FFXV had a 80:20 share. While things aren’t exact, if FFXV had a million copies on Xbox one for the first day, that is a lot. So yes, being an exclusive did hurt. Couple that with the trouble of shipping physical copies and sell through being really high, I wouldn’t just think “that’s ok”. We will have to see when they announce the next mile stones for the people who don’t think this is great to change their mind though 

Well, you won't change my mind about its start. The initial shipment figure will remain the same, after all. In the long run I expect VII to outpace XV, like I already said.

I haven’t read anything to make me think that it’s anything less than a great start 

Thats something tactically very wise from Square Enix. They will (imo) clearly rerelease the game as a remaster when the PS5 and new Xbox come out. It will be like a console launch title, which is something Rockstar did with GTA 5 and Naughty Dog did with The Last of Us. I think eventually the game will do really well. Its really a phenominal game. Theres a few things I could nitpick, but it is the finest Final Fantasy game since FF10. I have high hopes for Square with this one.