1.5M is good but it depends on what their expectations were. There was a lot of good web marketing done for it, but my impression was they didn't go after traditional media. They honestly might have achieved broader mainstream awareness if they'd gone for a PR agency which could place them in Entertainment Weekly or USA Today.
I remember one of the members on this board telling me of his friend at EA being surprised that a game was considered "a failure" at 4M units sold, because the marketing pukes projected it would move 7M. Anyone who mouths sales projections 7M for a game that doesn't start with "Madden" or "GTA" or "Modern Wa..." needs to have the cold boot of reality shoved up their ass so far it comes out of their navel.
Anyway, they're Swedish aren't they? I suspect that sales in the USA counted for a lot of their numbers, but the US dolla is so weak in the world that they probably wanted more yuuuuros. The American retail model is really messed up, too. So they may have paid a heap for shelf and promotional material space in stores, had a huge sell-in, and then still taken it in the shorts when the overabundance of units remaining were moved to discount, which gets covered in a kind of accounting shell-game. It's complex AND boring, but I did say "accounting" so I guess I'm being redundant.
