I don't advertising is going to be a problem. Everyone is talking about the price drop and the Slim model. Plus when people go to Amazon.com and Gamestop.com they are shown the limit policies of those 2 sites. So it's even easier to boost brand appeal if your product is in such high demand.

Forget being modest, i'm not being that conservative- 1st week sales well over 450K with at least 200k coming from US alone.

when the PS2's Slimline model came out it made a massive impact on PS2 sales. Sony struggled to meet demand for a while.

150k USA// 170k EUROPE// 120k Japan = 440,000 units. Most of you are making the ps3 too low in japan.

350-400 Thousand. I feel that Japan alone will do between 80-120 thousand, EU is where Sony will see big sales, the countries there will take the most advantage of the new price right away, The USA however, will be surprisingly low for Sony for the price, and that's because I think people in the U.S are waiting for software for the PS3.
Pretty sure American will wait until the holidays before they really jump on the PS3, so around Christmas I expect huge numbers for the PS3 in the U.S, might even beat out EU Christmas numbers. Also, if movie studios really start pushing Bluray this holiday, Sony will have a hard time meeting demand in the west.

As far as Japan goes, that's an artificial distinction that has no relevance towards their gaming habits.

In Japan a handheld is a console and it competes against the Wii, PS3, etc. Both for usertime and usercash.

I'm picking 237,518.

Tho' as a measure of success I'd say anything less than 200K will be a major disappointment for Sony and rather a bad sign that the PS3 is unlikely to improve its position. Anywhere between 200 & 300K is PS3 meeting expectations and it will start catching up to 360. >300k and I think it has a good chance of eating significantly into the Wii gap long term. Edit: by these numbers I mean the combined total of the launch weeks for each region, e.g. if Slim launches 1 week later in Others than in Americas/Japan then.

I think Phat PS3 sales are going to jump in markets where the slim price is being put onto the Phat (which doesn't seem to be happening here). So Phat could even nudge the 200K mark if there really is a large wave of people just waiting for the PS3 to hit that $299 mark. 

Japan - 150k
NA - 250k
Europe - 400k

Total - 800k

over 9000

300k total