For what possible reason?

 If it doesn't sell that much the xbox fanboys will laugh at it..

Haha yeah. It will sell that many easily with blu-ray and little big planet.

I think a lot of people saying it wont are shell shocked looking at just how well the PS3 has sold this year.

The PS3 has already sold almost double what it did last year at this point, and I see no signs of it slowing down. 15 million total for the year seems pretty likely, unless someone else has reasons stating why this trend will suddenly fall off?

For last year's financial year, Sony planned to ship 11 million PS3's*, but only shipped 9.24 million falling well short of their initial goal, and slighty short of their revised goal (9.5 million). For this year, they plan to ship 10 million (what I think is a conservative estimate). Do you really think they will beat their goal by 50%? I sure don't. I think 11.5 million is the max they could ship.

*Source for all numbers http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/14052008/323/sony-operating-profit-rises-fivefold-misses-estimates-update2.html

I think its possible. The biggest month (december) is still on its way.

Could happen.

crosses fingers

I did some quick estimates based on last year's numbers, and this is pretty likely to come true. Usually the final 4 months of the year (Sep-Dec) are equal to or slightly higher than the first 8 months of the year (Jan-Aug) thanks to the holidays. Even with a heavily front-loaded software lineup for 2008, the PS3 should end up right around the numbers in the initial post. (Why 6.9m? Why not the nice round number of 7m?)

The PS2/PS3 comparison is somewhat disingenous though, because in 2001* the PS2 about 18m units. Of that total, the PS3 sold about 5m in Japan, 7.5m in America, and 5.5m in Europe - well balanced in all regions. In contrast, the PS3 does over half its sales in Europe (54% to-date in 2008), compared to 35% in America and around 11% in Japan. In other words, while PS3 will likely exceed the PS2 European total from 2001, the worldwide comparison isn't going to look nearly as good. (PS3 should be around 13m worldwide for 2008.)

* Sony's 2001 fiscal year, not calendar year

Don't know, couldn't really care less.