They had eyes for the day and then bought it the next, sold 5+ million already

So a bit over 10% down globally FW on Arceus. Not great, but not terrible either. I don't think this one will have great legs in future years, it just seems like it's going to be one of the more forgettable pokemon titles.

However I think holiday sales will be very strong. After all, there's not a big backlog of evergreen Switch 2 titles to pick up this holiday. Mario Kart, DK and Pokemon are going to be the games people get for their new console this holiday. So while I don't think legs will be great, holiday should be big.

Still not as confidant in it's sale as I was when I first responded to this thread but it still has a decent shot if the holiday sales can be as strong as I expect.

Again wrong, singling out Europe makes perfect sense because the US and Japan will be no where near as down as Europe making it the outlier. Nintendo's dominance of Japan is irrelevant because they cant control the competition's shortcoming. Nintendo can only control their success and its Europe that seems to be lacking on the ability to purchase Nintendo hardware unlike the US where Nintendo has the highest selling hardware and Japan where this is also true. As for Pokemon ZA, in the US even if it is down at opening week, the holidays will help close that gap. Europe seems far too down to pull that off because it is an outlier. Japan having a larger launch is due to Japan holiday season starting later than the US giving Japanese consumers no reason to hold off on a purchase. US consumers on the other hand know the holidays are around the corner and this will contribute to the legs over the holidays. Pokemon SV legged it's way despite the technical issues and I'm sure you which region was the outlier. Want a hint? It's the outlier. 

The only reason why certain posters are hellbent on defending Europe is because Europe is consentitently used to concern troll Nintendo. It's OK, each platform has a region they could do better in. Nintendo has room to do better in Europe and PS has room to do better in the US and much, much better in Japan.

Did you not see the latest figures posted by Vgchartz where PS5 outsold Switch 2 in Europe? Did you know Switch holds the record for longest streak in US history? I wonder if that is true for Europe? Probably not because it is an outlier for Nintendo. Europe is not a good representation for Nintendo hardware at all, for PS it is.

You're simply not getting the point.

US sales are a decline and somewhere in between Japan and Europe (decline %). Japan sales represent growth and much better performance than both US/Europe. Europe sales are decline like the US, but more significant (30% region). Europe being worst performing is no more of an outlier than Japan being best performing, except Europe actually reflects the wider trend of "Decline". It is not the outlier here. If Pokemon outfperormed Arceus, I would agree with you but it didn't.

I'll leave the point here as I really just wanted to contextual how we are supposed to use European data and I've done that job now. 

In light of the 5.8m opening week, I'm gonna keep my prediction of 15-17.5m lifetime for the moment, though I feel 12.5-15m is also a viable possibility.

A lot will come down to word of mouth and holiday sales; next gen Pokémon is apparently coming in 2026 so the first year is critical, with the large majority of its sales likely to take place in it's first 2.5 months.

In the US, the game apparently had the biggest physical release since Tears of the Kingdom, back in May 2023:

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/466112/pokemon-legends-z-a-had-biggest-physical-launch-in-the-us-since-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom/