i see DQIX selling close to 10 million or more in Japan alone

Sounds really good to me even if it's only retail orders not consumer pre-orders. This is a key 3rd party Wii game that needs to sell well and it looks like it will.

 It's gonna hit 20

250k pre-orders doesn't insure much of anything, sorry to say. Although, it does indicate that there WILL be lots of strength in the title.

The closest game I can think of would be MHP2 for PSP. I believe it had ~500k preorders.

Realilisticly, what matters is how many copies will be available @ launch.

I would certainly expect around 400k for the opening week, not opening day (probably closer to 300k).

This would atleast ensure the game to reach 750k in Japan. Could it get to 1m? Most likely. However, its not ensured. One-Piece, although keeping steady @ 5k/wk, had 30k o/d, 40k o/w, and is still under 70k. Its hard to compare a uber-3rd party title, but from what we have to go off of (and including Wii Naturo and Fire Emblem), a serious game like this might only have a 2.0~2.5 multiplier. Yet at the same time, it could pull a WarioWare or Wii Sports/Play and get an insane multiplier too.

Right now, I'd say 425k o/w, and 900k lifetime.

Monster Hunter Freedom 2 has 500k preorders month before release. Retailers. I believe it's same in this case. I think it would be extremely difficult to count preorders from clients only. 250k is a solid score. I think this game will be less successful than everybody expects though. Millionseller? Maybe. DQ:Monsters wasn't extremely successful when consider userbase.

Well, considering that it is possible that, by the time DQ:Swords is released, it will have more pre-orders than any other next-gen consoles games have actual units sales in Japan, I'd say that bodes well for the Wii there.

And while DQ:M may not be the highest selling game in the series, I'm sure S-E is happy with selling a million units of it, consider it is more than all of their PSP efforts combined, twice over. Square Enix knows where the market is, and it isn't on PSP.

So why are we comparing Wii to the PSP again?

Try comparing something more similar...Like console game v. console game such as KH2.

If Dragon Quest Swords tops a million in Japan that would be excellent for a major RPG spinoff. DQIX however will sell 3 or 4 times that at least I think.

well MHF2 sold 750k on week 1 so obviously the preorders didn't end 1 month before the release.  Using MHF2 as a bar it would suggest 375k on first week, but that is far too simplistic of a comparison.

Probably this thread is based on incorrect translation.

200 k of It's a Wonderful World is the number of orders reciept from wholesale store and not actual preorders from consumers.

250k of DQS is the number of first shipments from SquareEnix. Now, in some shops, preorder is already terminated because of sold-out.