Well in UK it's definitely hard to tell but Modern Warfare has grown into quite a large franchise.  I mean brand alone pushed World at War sales to great heights. Now in the UK it is definitely looking like it'll surpass GTA IV but I'm not so sure on a worldly level.  GTA IV did about 5.9 million in its first week across PS3 and 360... easily the biggest launch of any video game well ever.  Modern Warfare 2 on a world level has quite a bit to sell.  I think many expectations are about in the 5-6 million range right now (3-4 million 360, 2 million PS3), but it is moving at such fast rates with a large following that doesn't preorder (the mainstream I was talking about) that it could be bigger.

Now of course I'm not going to put it on Pachter level but we could have something that really just wows us beyond anything else.  Now how did it happen?  Well GTA lost a little bit of steam considering PS2 and GTA were deeply tied brands.  Carried on to PS3 but userbase didn't allow it to reach its fullest potential.  While Modern Warfare is pulling a "Halo".  Came out as untested and (aside from CoD brand) and exploded due to lots of hype and quality.  Therefore you are seeing a Halo 1 to Halo 2 momentum here where because the brand has just exponentially increased that sales (especially first week) are going to do something similar.  Remember Halo 2 was the biggest single platform opening for anything until Burning Crusade, Halo 3, and Wrath of Lich King eventualy beat it.  So I think think this is a really good explanation for a lot of the reasons why.

Will legs not be so hot?  Well legs will be good but not in comparison to first week.  Potentially a DQ scenario but not as extreme.  Mainly being numbers after the first week are goign to look pretty uncomparable but will still sell quite well over time.  Meaning despite inflated first week it'll still have the mainstream apeal to carry it but will look minimal in comparison to the first week. 

So... how will NSMB Wii will match that? Unless NSMB Wii was supposed to be a casual gamer game and intended to have legs, not frontloaded/blockbuster and not core which what gaming journalists doing on that game now.

Am I the only one who hasn't got the slightest interest in MW2?

1.7 million in UK alone... that is crazy.

wow I love your posts

anyway.....I agree..its a HALO 1 to HALO 2 increase

We could also look at it like the GTA3 to GTA:VC increase (11 million to 14 million)......as the brand name caught on with GTA3, GTA:VC got even more sales as popularity increased & maybe people who had gotten GTA3 through renting & 2nd hand purchases got GTA:VC day one.

On your legs bit, yeah DQ9 has proven with a mainstream fanbase legs will show

as we'r in the holidays inflated legs will be there anyway!

well 1.2 to 1.7 million in uk is absolutely massive. There's only about 6-7million ps3's and 360s in the uk. That's like 20% attach rate!!

yeah but (and feel free to correct anything i misrepresent cause i'm writting this off the top of my head)...

1. Halo 3 has the biggest week 1 opening of any game at 3.8M

2. according to this (and ioi) just the UK is going to have a opening on the happy side of 1M.

3. according to the pre-order charts there are more than 2M preorders so an opening of say 3M seems reasonable if not too low.

4. non-americans also buy video games.  (i would hope this is obvious but sometimes on these forums....)

this isn't just going to be huge, it's going to blow the current records out of the water.

Holy crap...

Congrats to Activision for this gold mine. I hate their arrogance, but wow.

And now GAME are giving free express delivery with the game... now I just need to make sure someone is in the house for its release.

I still don't think it has a shot at beating GTA IV

Actually the first week is GTA IV... Halo 3 is the biggest OP in a single plataform. Something that is really annoying to me is that people don't count PC sales. Mostly because this site don't track PC usually, but for such a great game we will have at least a notion(right ioi?). This game will outsell GTAIV with just consoles, with pc the OP will be even better.

Biggest entertainment launch in history? Doubtful. I would think the final harry potter book would hold that title considering it sold (not sure if the reports means shipped or not) like 15 million copies in the first 24 hours alone WW (most of which were sold in the UK and the US).

But I guess the games industry doesn't count literature as entertainment.