It's possible. FFXII did have a better first day but there were also a lot more PS2 owners at the time. FFXIII may have longer legs due to it's holiday season release and people that buy PS3s might want to pick it up. I'm expecting it to have a weaker first week than XII but a stronger second week. In the end I see it just falling short of the 2.4 million that XII sold.

Wasn't FFXIII supposed to be the best selling FF game?

ok, thanks jarrod, I thought I was missing something obvious :)

In worldwide sales.  Mainly because it's being released on two consoles, and because the first FF of each generation tends to sell better than the last FF of each generation.  In Japan, expectations have actually been kind of low for the game, which is only releasing on one system.  (Particularly with organizations like Famitsu/Enterbrain that predict market trends in Japan.)

Of course they sell less, look at the bases through three full years. PS2 had 20 games top a million in Japan on a 23 million base, or roughly one game per million in base and most of that came by the end of 2003, full year three which is wher PS3 is now. PS3 has a four million base in Japan and through the Final Fantasy XIII launch had no titles top one million. PS3 is more akin to GameCube/Saturn which had a million-seller for every few million users added. The N64 in contrast had 12 titles top a million in Japan on a ~5.4m base. PS3 looks much closer to the Saturn/GC pattern though. Also, you can't compare PS2 sequels to franchises just getting started on PS3 because the PS2 sequels had a huge base. Against the original PS2 title in the franchise, when the PS3 base was closest to PS2 base the titles are far lower because PS3 hw and thus sw doesn't perform as well as PS2 in Japan.

MGS4 is down 15% from MGS2

Devil May Cry 4 is down 40%+ from DMC 1 on PS2

RE5 is down from RE3 by a third

GTA is down 40% from GTAIII to GTAIV

Obviously the 20 PS2 games to hit a million, save for FFXIII are all down at least 30% as well since they haven't hit a million on PS3. But again, you'd have to tease out the originals to compare the PS2 base at a comparable size to the PS3 base

The west would have to make up for the Japanese sales deficit which is extremely unlikely.

Yeah, not much chance of outselling FFX worldwide either. It'll outsell FFXII worldwide though.

I actually wonder if FFXIV (PS3) outsells FFXI (PS2) though? Barrier for entry is lower (FFXI needed an additional HDD purchase) and compatibility is higher (FFXI was incompatible with PS2 slim).

XIII will outsell X worldwide. It has the benefit of being on two consoles.

The PS2 was bigger than both the 360 and the PS3 plus JRPGs have declined in popularity.

Two consoles that are doing worse combined than the one FFX was on.

XIII won't touch X's 8m.  It'll pass XII's 6m with ease though.