Resident Evil 5 is like Devil May Cry 4 in that while it is big, it is not big to a point that it completely overshadows other games.  If Lost Odyssey lost any potential buyers, DMC4 had little to do with it.  Halo 3 was big to the point that it would completely destroy any other game that came out near it's release sales wise.  BTW, IGN are not good with release dates for their games.  GameStop.com are a lot more reliable in that regard and they still list March 3rd for SO4's release date.

Blue Dragon is really below average, and the only reason that game got into the 200k point was because of Akira Toriyama (Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger) and Hironobu Sakaguchi/Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy series)...

Star Ocean should pass that barrier 1. Because of the install base, 2. Because it's one of Square Enix main franchises and 3. It should have really good quality...

Now, i'm pretty sure that SO4 will see up to 250,000 in Japan LTD, really low for a Star Ocean main title...

That is pretty low for the series.  For quite a while, we expected every SO game(barring remakes) to sell atleast 500K in Japan alone.  Unfortunately, the 360 userbase will limit the audience somewhat.  However, it seems to S-E plans to release the game on the PS3 sometime after as the official boxart of the game didn't have the "Only on Xbox 360" label.

Yes, it should.

The advantage Star Ocean will get is that the X360 is actually moving a steady number of units...For the first time ever. Because of that, it'll have an actual userbase to sell to.

In the past, most users bought X360s, played 1-2 must have titles, and sold the machine. But now that it's moving 10k weekly...When SO launches, it'll have a great base to sell to.

I anticipate 160k first week sales.

AFAIK the franchise is still alive in Japan, by means of the anime and the manga.

no

highest selling star ocean sold over 1 million barely.

but it was launched on a system with twice the userbase of 360. so not likely.

and it hardly will have 50% of the 360 market of japan to do something like hat

Given that Star Ocean IV is the Square Enix's first big budget release of an exisiting IP, I'd say yes. SE is going to market this game extensively and if MS was smart they'd be sure to have plenty Star Ocean 360 Bundles available.

Yes it will. In fact, I think SO4 will hit the 300K mark!

if it didnt, SE will only blame itself for a wasted simultaneous launch with a PS3 version, cause when a ps3 version will be launched like 3 monhs later, it will sell like crap,,

The thing is that MS largely subsidized SO4 tech budget because they bankrolled Infinite Undiscovery which is running on an earlier version of the engine. So launching on the 360 is way, way cheaper.