Batman: Arkham City manages to sell over 4.5-million units in its first week
The latest sales figures for Rocksteady’s second Batman game, Batman: Arkham City, paint a very pretty picture for the developer and its publisher, Warner Bros., as the game managed to sell 4.6-million copies in its first seven days.
Now Bettor.com was never known for its skills at mathematics, yet for the sake of inducing a jaw-dropping, eye popping look of stunned amazement on the reader’s faces, we will attempt to convert that figure into a dollar amount.
So 4.6-million units sold multiplied by the average price of the game ($60) equals $500-trillion!
While that may have been a slight exaggeration, the actual figure should be somewhere around the $276-milllion mark, which to be honest is still enough for many a jaw to drop.
The worldwide figure of 4.6-milllion units sold is no mean feat, as many AAA titles struggle to reach such figures in their entire product lifecycle, let alone their first week.
However, no video game sales figures news story would be complete without comparing it to the industry standard, which stands at a cool $650-million from its five days on sale. And ‘what is the game that managed to earn the equivalent to developing nations GDP in the span of five days?’ I hear the reader ask.
The answer is Call of Duty: Black Ops, which was released around the same time last year. What is interesting is how Activision are looking to break that record with their next instalment in the Modern Warfare series with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Grappling away from the modern day battlefield and back to the gothic rooftops and equally atmospheric sewers and streets of Arkham City, it seems that the revenues are justified if one looks at the review scores for the game.
That is because ‘money’ is not the only factor which decides whether or not a game is successful or not. Take the example of, the aforementioned, Black Ops which sold extremely well but was heavily criticised by a number of gamers.
Batman: Arkham City has received the opposite when it comes to reception as the game not only earning near perfect to perfect review scores, but it has been hailed as one of the best games to come out this year and is already being hailed as a sure-shot to be nominated for the ‘Game of the Year’ award.
Another factor readers need to take into consideration is that these figures are only expected to increase with the hectic Holiday Season about to begin in a few weeks time. It is that period where sales figures tend to shoot through the roof and beyond.
It will be interesting to see if Batman can scale any higher...
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