Kaz > Me? What the hell is that supposed to mean?

I played the game at E3, I'm a long-time GT fan, and I'm telling you that it was basically GT4. I would definitely label the game as more of a spinoff than a mainline GT title. That's just my opinion having played the game and followed the game industry for the last 10 years. I'm not spinning anything - I spoke to the lead designer on the game and played it. The dev team is pretty small for the title relative to GT5.

As for sales, I expect the game to do 300-400k on the main initial release and maybe another 200k with budget releases and I don't think there is a single region in which the title will outsell GT5 - I struggle to see what logic you are using to suggest this really (aside from larger PSP userbase but as I've said that is offset hugely by the fact that GT is more of a home console title).

As for Monster Hunter, the title has a good shot at 1.5m in Japan which is exactly where most people pegged it - I don't think anybody who follows the industry in detail expected it to do any better than that so I'm not sure what your point here is either. MH3 has performed exactly as expected.

Just basically Kaz's words about his game and automotives in general hold a lot more weight than almost anybody else's words on the matter, so if Kaz says that his game is a mainline Gran Turismo, I'm sorry but I don't think a lot of people would take your word over the man himself, hence Kaz > you.

I expect GT5 to outsell GTP PSP worldwide but not in Japan, the userbase is just too big to make up for the fact that a racing sim is indeed better played in a console.

As for MH3, it performed as expected according to certain people but not others, some Nintendo fanboys were expecting 3 million for the title. I doubt it'll get to 1.5 million, I expected 1.8 million based on Wii's huge userbase and the fact that MH3 has gained a lot of popularity over the past few years, I think 1 million is still superb, but I don't expect much more than that, we'll see the numbers for the next 2-4 weeks and then we'll have a good idea where it'll end up.

-FACEPALMS-

GT3 sold more because it was bundled and released at a time when the only other game available on PS2 was Final Fantasy X. Those two titles single-handedly sold PS2 during 2001. If you look at the initial sales for GT3 you'd see the game was on track to top out at around 1.3m. If anything, this only futher proves the point that GT sales are on the decline in Japan - you would logically have expected GT4 to outsell GT3 but it didn't. Remove the fact that GT3 was bundled and you have a clear drop in sales with each sequel, that is without the fact that you are moving from PS1 / PS2 to PSP / PS3 which sell far less software in Japan than their predecessors (Monster Hunter Portable aside).

Same situation is true of MGS4 - it sold above expectations due to lack of competition vs MGS3, I don't think it is very indicative (i.e a 20% drop) of what we can expect from GT5 or Final Fantasy XIII.

If 500k seems very low but you don't expect the title to do 1m then what exactly are you expecting?

Maybe 1.5m is a tad high for MH3 but the title should sell to ~1.1-1.2m by the end of the year then I expect a budget release next year which could easily do another 300k+ so I certainly don't think it is impossible.