Well, the Escapist article says 1 million after specifically mentioning system ports. Genesis is one of the "six systems" they mention, so in context surely it's being included, no?
Fig pitch is pretty vague.
Anyway, I'd point you to the Digital Antiquarian's post:
https://www.filfre.net/2014/10/starflight/
Here's what it says:
The best was far better than they had bargained for: initial sales far exceeded the most optimistic expectations, leaving EA scrambling to produce more copies to fill empty store shelves. It would eventually sell well over 100,000 copies on MS-DOS alone, a major hit by the standards of any platform. Starflight placed owners of other computers in the unaccustomed position of lusting after a game on MS-DOS of all places, a platform most had heretofore viewed with contempt. Appearing as it did even as owners of the new generation of 68000-based machines were reveling in their Macs, Amigas, and Atari STs, Starflight was an early sign of a sea change that would all but sweep those platforms into oblivion within five years or so. With it now clear that a market of eager MS-DOS gamers existed, the platform suddenly became a viable first-release choice for publishers and developers. Only years later would Starflight belatedly, and not without much pain given the unique Forthian nature of its underpinnings, be ported to the Amiga, ST, Macintosh, Sega Genesis, and even the little Commodore 64 — the latter of which would probably have been better bypassed. It would sell at least 200,000 more copies on those platforms, a nice instance of creativity and sheer hard work being amply rewarded for Rod McConnell’s idealistic little team of five.
I'm not sure how we got from 300k to 1 million, but, yeah... At least we're dealing with a 2:1 ratio. (Incidentally, this was written after the Escapist's article, and while I find DA's conclusions sometimes a little dubious, his research seems thorough, so I'd be surprised if he was the one whose number was off.)
