Agreed on DKCR, I really think the only market where it does truly impressive figures will be America.  In Japan, I'd be surprised if it passes 500k.

It's not that close honestly, it's over 100k less versus the PS2 installments on initial release, and PW will probably also crawl past 800k adding insult to injury.  Plus MGS4 having only one reprint inflates sales for that single release comparably, at this point regular MGS2/MGS3 sales were well cut short by the Sub-expansions.

The Crazy head of Media-create there are still about 100k copies on the shelves which they haven't been able to sell for a budget price.

The monster hunter franchise also wasn't  nearly as big in 2005-6 as with it  was in 2009, which was after Freedom 2.

Can you source said quote or are you simply comparing tracked sales to shipments?  Having less than 10% overstock isn't exactly underperforming either. And which analysts in Japan said MH3 underperformed again?

MHP sold well over a million, while MH2 (which released later) only did about 600-700k total.  And the Best version of MH2 came out in 2007 (well after MHP2, which sold ~1.7m), it didn't even break 150k... again, MH2 PS2 came out while MH was BOOMING on PSP, yet those sales didn't translate to the pay-to-play console... Frontier's been a decent success (for what it is) and it's sales don't compare either...

... Im disappointed. Extremely disappointed

MH2 was released just a couple of months after MHP, the Portable one wasn’t a million seller yet at that time and in my opinion the MH crazinies didn’t start until the second portable game was released, and by the time “the best” version of that game was released it was already dated and the PS2 entries wheren’t nearly as polished as MHIII or as Freedom 2 anyway, and let’s not forget that we are talking about a console which already had it’s best days behind it.

I also think that Capcom hadn’t realize yet the gold that they did have in their hands until Freedom 1 was released, and that Freedom 2 and MHIII did get much more hype and marketing from them than the previous one’s.

Uh, MHF2 was basically the same game as MH2, polish included.  Hell, every MH until MH3 worked off the MH2 template (MHF2, MHF2G, MHFO).  

The BEST reprint of MH2 on PS2 totally flopped comparably, and it released only half a year after MHP2 (and by that point MH2 had sold over 1.2m).  Hell, even the crusty Wii port of MHG sold better (250k), and it was both full priced and didn't work with the standard Wii controller.   There's real concrete factors as to why MoHun inherently sells more on handhelds than it does on consoles (or PC), and those factors aren't really related to whom makes the systems...

The first game in the series to really get the all-star hype/promotion treatment was MH3, but it was largely subsidized by Nintendo.  MHP3 will be getting the same sort of push, but again it's being largely bankrolled by SCEI.

Poor comparison as you're including subsistance on MGS2 and MGS3 and even including collection. Hell if there's a MGS HD Collection on PS3 that includes MGS2 and MGS3 I bet you'd count that too huh?

With that said MGS4 did under perform, but not nearly as bad as you're implying, especially when you consider the price and state of the PS3 at the time.

A game that doesn't sell out of its initial shipment even when it goes in the bomba bin for many months under performs, no ifs, buts or maybes about it. It's not a bomba, but it did perform under expectations and to say anything to the contrary is borderline fanboyism.

MGS2S and MGS3S also work against a comparison negatively for MGS2/MGS3 as they took away sales that would've gone to catalogue sales of the original or budget versions of the games.  If we had a MGS4S, then MGS4 would've also sold much less than it has for the original version (probably 800k max).

The best comparison would be comparing like with like, and for that we really have only the original print release sales (833k MGS2, 820k MGS3, 707k MGS4).  A significant drop, though I agree it could've gone way worse (hello Musou/VF/Mingol/etc).