The pre-orders are lower then I thought they'd be. However its not close enough to release to say its going to dissapoint.

Look at Pokemon HG/SS preorders: it releases just 1 week after FF XIII and has only 80k preorders at this point (less than PS3 version of FF). In 8 weeks FFXIII will easily pass the 400k preorders, and no all the customers preorder the game so a with that amount of preorders 500k is pretty sure...

I keep meaning to cancel my preorder, but I have no illusions that doing so will seriously affect day-1 sales. Over its lifetime it won't outsell Halo 3 or even FFX, but I'd be shocked if it didn't do at least 1M on its first day.

I have told you this probably 10 times now, yet you still make the same false statement for like the umpteenth time

FF9 was the low point in terms of sales post FF7

FF10 outsold FF9 by around 3 million, FF12 outsold FF9 by around 600K

the series has not become smaller & smaller with each iteration.

The series seeing a surge with one title, but seeing a fall-off in sales with every other title (FFIX, FFX-2, FFXII) is called getting smaller over time.  Whatever you want to call it, go ahead.  Sure, the games are still selling in the millions and that's good, but if you put all the games data up, you'll see that after FFVII, each game goes down in sales, with only FFX seeing a rise in sales, and still not to the level of FFVII.  At best, it looks like the scenario is saying only one FF a generation can reach peak sales.  And it isn't looking good for FFXIII to reach either the level of FFX (8 Million) or FFVII (9.7 Million).

That rule isn't just for FF, its happened with GT & MGS too.

FF9 & FF12 both being released in PS2 & PS3's launch month respectively definetely didn't help their sales

I mean FF12 came out here very close to PS3's launch, I pre-ordered my PS3 when FF12 was releasing & didn't bother buying it as I was getting aPS3( ofcourse I did buy it later on)

ITs like this:

FF7 > FF10 > FF8 >FF12 > FF10-2 > FF9

so in general after FF7 the series declined with FF8

since then its not declined & the last FF of the PS2 generation ended up higher than the last FF of the PS1 generation

Pre-orders tend to surge upwards closer to release. FFXIII is still two months away. I think the OP is jumping the gun.

That's what the pure sales data shows.  However, if you look more closely, there was more hype into titles like FFXII and FFVIII.  Granted, the sales for FFVIII and X are near the same, but FFXII is a big drop off.  You can attribute it to being near the end of the PS2 if you want, but that didn't hurt other games, like Shadow of the Colossus or Dragon Quest VIII or even the Persona titles.  All games that would;ve probably never sold in the west, but saw great sales due to word of mouth and being on a late gen platform with a large userbase.

Sure, this might just be something conntected to the FF games, which would connect to what I was saying earlier.  It seems only one main FF game a generation can reach that 'max' level of sales.  Maybe FF fans only get majorly hyped for one game or maybe they, as you say, are looking for the next best thing in graphics and move on to the next system.  But whatever the reason, it just seems from the previous two generations that only one main FF game a gen gets the most attention, and the sales taper off from there.  And even in the PS2 era, the sales weren't as strong as the PSX era.  And it doesn't look like FFXIII is going to match FFX or FFVII.....

This game isn't frontloaded in US. It's actually a leg series for west market, selling just 1/5 of the total sales in first week.

1. FFXII is the same drop off like FF9 was from FF8, so no biggie, its happened before & the drop to FF12 was smaller. In fact if we count FFX-2, the series rebounded with FF12. Persona is pretty much not relevant here as its a very niche series, FF12 is a FF, which has lots of "hardcore casual" gamers that buy it (I said ahrdcore casual, the type that only buy PES, FIFA, GTA & FF each year).

2. MGS3 saw a drop from MGS2, so did GT4, so did God OF War 2, FF isn't independant to this drop near the end of PS2's lifecycle. DQ8 was the first DQ on the console so ofcourse it sold huge + it cam bundled with the FF12 demo here, that definetely sold extra copies. SOTC, please once again don't compare small niche products to mainstream franchises.

3. I completely agree with your second para. This is what happened for GT & MGS too. The first ones of last generation were hyped to the heavens for gameplay graphics (GT3 & MGS2)....both games sold amazing (15 & 5 million respectively). FFX too (8 Million). But then GT4 (10 million), MGs3 (4 Million) & FFXII (5.7 Million) all sold less.

You will see the same this gen. FFXIII will probably sell between 8 - 10 Million, with the possibility past 8 Million as this FF can really attract wider audiences & with huge marketing we could see massive success. But then FF15 (not counting FF14 here) will once again sell in the 5 Million range.