One thing to note is that Starcraft, one of the best selling PC games of all time, sold 11 million copies world wide (citation). Starcraft continues to appear in the Top 10 PC game charts to this day. It is doubtful that Sims 3, or any other game, will match the 12 year sales record of Starcraft and approach anything near 10 million units.
In EA's fiscal year earnings they claimed Sims 3 has sold in excess of 4 million. Wikipedia says 5.9 million. However it links the source for that to a Gamespot review that never mentions sales. Searching Gamespots new's for it discloses the most recent figure as 4.5 million as of Jan 22.
I don't see this reaching it's current prediction.
@Arbiter, Do we have early data for Sims 2? I'd be curious to see how closely it's tracking to it's predecessor with the recent news of ludicrous first week sales.
We all figured the sales would be high, but, to be honest, I really didn't expect it to break records... But then again, if any game could - this is probably it.
I still believe 13 million + copies is too high of a forecast. I think a lot of the numbers people are assuming are including expansions. At an abstract level, are people expecting this to outsell Sims 2? Do people think the interest in the Sims franchise is still increasing?
@Jamix012, The current price definitely needs to come down - but, the numbers that I can find reflect the original Sims having about 6.3 million sales and The Sims 2 having about 13 million sales currently - though these numbers could include expansions.
As of this time, I believe that with so little information available about this title at this time, the current price should come down at least a handful of million units.
I do believe that it is fair to estimate an increase in the total number of units sold over The Sims 2.
1