@kingofwale

WOW////thats high

whats your regional breakdown...also keeping in mind Golden Weeks full effect

First day sales are going to be totally dominated by existing console owners. It is over the next couple of weeks that new console owners will emerge. I asked at Best Buy yesterday when I picked up a copy of GTAIV if they have been selling much new hardware along with GTAIV and they said not much. Over the weekend I expect that to change some. One interesting thing though is they were all out of XBOX 360 Arcades editions.

Personally, I expect the XBox 360 will get a bigger boost in North America with the PS3 getting a bigger boost in Europe, and for both systems to receive similar boosts worldwide; at best one system would receive 60% of the overall boost while the other received 40% of the overall boost. Being that this distribution will be so equal, and there were extra Wii units available for Mario Karts release, I suspect that they will both fall short of the Wii but this will (probably) be the closest week of the year; I wouldn't be that surprised to see the Wii at 500,000 units with the PS3 and XBox 360 hovering around 400,000.

I think the PS3 will see the largest percentage bump in hardware in NA while the 360 has a chance to edge out the PS3 in percentage in PAL regions... Either way, it should be close in Europe. I think the 360 price drop should help it a fair amount there combined with the massive advertising campaign MS has reportedly launched in many EU countries.

Still, the PS3 should outsell the 360 in both regions.

 Giving the popularity of it already in effect in Europe. I am seeing close to 180K there. Beating out Wii.

NA I'm seeing close to 160K (the Best buy I work for has sold more than 2.5 times the PS3 we normally sell in a week) 

 In Japan, Golden Week will increase it to around 20K.

So you have around 360K globally. Being a bit conservative, I'm going to go with 350-300K

If Wii still wins worldwide this week or even if it's close then Xbox360 and PS3 have no chance of ever closing the sales gap.

 Wii is clearly targeting different demographics more and more with the release of Wiifit. Frankly, as a PS3 owner, I don't see it been much of a threat at this point. Especially with the increase in PS3 sales vs last year.

 MGS4 wont just be bought by Metal Gear fans. It will be bought by anyone who is impressed by its graphics and storyline. So this Metal Gear, with all its hype, will outsell all of the previous Metal Gears. You can't completely judge new releases by older ones. Like I said before, I expect that by the end of the year MORE copies of MGS4 will be sold than Gears 2.  Next year Gears will pass MGS4, but end of the year totals will have MGS4 ahead of Gears 2.

MGS4 is the third biggest game of the year, and the second or third best seller on the PS3 in history.

Just think about this. For Gears 2 to really have an impact on hardware sales, it will need to outsell Halo 3. How many  people do you think didn't buy Halo 3 or the original Gears, but will buy a console for Gears 2? The people awaiting Socom is probably larger than that list,if Gears 2 fails to perform in any way and Resistance 2 is better then those people might not even pick up the console.

By the time Gears 2 is released the PS3 will be winning in Europe, will have had a big boost in Japan and be selling 20-30,000 more than the Xbox360 there alone, and by the looks of it now will be outsold in America as well. Sony still has a price cut left if Microsoft drops price in NA. Its entirely possible by that time the PS3 would have outsold the 360 by over 2.5 million since the beginning of the year. Someone is going to call BS on this, but I called the PS3 passing the 360 in all regions which no one believed, but look at whats happening now.  

I think you overestimate the number of people who will buy a game (in this case Metal Gear Solid) in a genre they have no interest in because it has pretty graphics. The Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell games have all topped out at (roughly) 5 Million units sold which is realistically the maximum you can expect from Metal Gear Solid 4; and you may want to consider the possibility that Metal Gear Solid 4 may fall far short of that number this year.

Beyond that game sales do not impact hardware in the way you think ... People buy a system because they're in the market for a videogame system and the library of that particular system interests them at that time; they don't necessarily buy a piece of hardware because a game in a series they have played before is being released. On top of that not everyone who bought into a highly hyped big selling game will buy the sequel; personally I owned Gears of War and will not be buying Gears of War 2, I owned Socom and will not be buying a PS3.