The point is that the popularity of the title matters, and it doesn't matter how many copies it sold in the first 3 days.
You guys are also looking at the number of copies sold number without factoring in bundles. We know God of War received 3-5 bundles within the first year of its release while The Last of Us only received 1. Spider-Man launched with a typical PS4 Pro bundle and then a $199.99 bundle.
This is not to say The Last of Us Part II would have sold just as much, but God of war would have not reached 10 million in 13 months without it, and Spider-Man would have not reached 13.5 million within that time frame without the $199.99 bundle, which was selling out during the holiday season due to the price point.
Sony sells a lot of games through bundles and online sales, but it's impossible to make any sense of it without numbers.
I am not saying it flopped, it obviously didn't, it was huge, but whether you look at Spider-Man or God of War 2018, none of those games stagnated as much as TLOU2.
Those games sold maybe 5 million in the first month and spent the next year getting that 10 million mark. The Last of Us 2 however, seems to have sold 6-8 million at launch, and then spend almost 2 years selling the next 2 million.
That's why this conversation is dredged back up, Ragnarok is a pretty good comparison point hence the similarities in marketing and focus, yet it only highlights even more how The Last of Us 2 completely stagnated for some weird reason.