"Cause retailers didn't have faith in the game. According to VGC, it sold through 85% of its 20k retailer pre-orders, and many shops sold out."

==> if it is the case then the sales will improve the 2nd/3rd week when others copies will be avaible .
I personnaly doubt that this will be the case .. wait & see.

That is also why the game is a complete turn off to me, because of the English voices (Japanese are much, much better!) and since I love the typical Japanese RPG games, this is really a "non" JRPG. If it turns out that way, then these kind of games wouldn't interest me no longer. Trusty Bell Japanese crap? It's one of the first 360 games which almost made me to purchase a 360!

several reasons:

- in Japan gaming is shifting from home consoles to handheld based
- japanese gamers are more intererted in mini-games and training games (essentially mini-games aswell) nowadays , therefore:
- only well known franchises of long , story based games still sell (or games by well-known producers) , while new ips are being ignored
- the PS3 doesn't seem to appeal to japanese customers

Yes PS3 really only seem to appeal to a small group. No surprise its doing poorly in Japan where small, convenient and portable is the key to success. I feel sorry for gamers who wan't to play games that are trapped on PS3.

The main reason I think is because it's not a traditional JRPG. It's not turn based and it's more action/RPG than RPG. When I first played the demo I thought this would turn off some Japanese from buying it.

because the retailers dont want to lose many money, and dont take big risks, if the retailers put 500,000 software of one title in the stores and only sold 100,000 in the lifetime of the game is a very big lost, only big preorders push a new franchise.

Plenty of "good games" sell poorly, you have a no name game, on a poor selling system. I honestly think the ps3 needs a jump start before people start buying New IPs. Honestly would you buy a 600 dollar system based on a nice looking new IP? No. You buy it for the big exciting sequals your looking forward to, or you buy it for a ton of great games, which is also not available as of yet. Or you buy it for the blu-ray but if you do that your not really that interested in the games from the get go.

Yeah... LOL You'd want that wouldn't you ... Fans and their excuses

 That makes NO sense. The DS has sold 17 million units+, the PS3 hasn't even broken 1 million yet! That's like comparing 2% of 100 which is 2 and 1% of 10,000 which is 100. See the difference?