Why Have No Other Batman Games Been Able to Beat Arkham City’s 12.5 Million Sales Record?

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Why Have No Other Batman Games Been Able to Beat Arkham City’s 12.5 Million Sales Record?

Released in 2011, Batman: Arkham City is still the definitive superhero game in the eyes of many fans, and us too. If you ever wondered why it’s so good, then we’re here to tell you. It gave us more of the already successful formula and style we first saw in Arkham Asylum. But it also refined nearly every aspect of it, like the combat, story, and world design, to near perfection.

The impact of this improvement can’t be understated. The game ended up selling over 12.5 million units and brought more than $600 million in revenue. We even got other games after it, like Arkham Knight and Arkham Origins, but none have managed to match its sales record or cultural legacy. Here’s why.

Batman: Arkham City is still the undisputed GOAT of superhero games

First and foremost, you need to understand that Arkham City hit an absolute sweet spot of game design. It struck the perfect balance between story, gameplay, and world size. Unlike Arkham Asylum’s linear structure or Arkham Knight’s big, but sometimes bloated city, it had a map that was intricately detailed and full of meaningful content.

Highest-rated superhero games ever on Metacritic

1⃣ ‘Batman: Arkham City’ — 96
2⃣ ‘Batman: Arkham Asylum’ — 92
3⃣ ‘Spider-Man 2’ — 91

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

— Culture Crave

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Timing was another crucial factor. Arkham City was released in 2011, when superhero popularity was at an all-time high and open-world action games were flourishing. It benefited from a booming interest in the genre and rode that wave perfectly. It also helped that the game was a multi-platform launch on the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.

Remember that this was during a time when physical sales were still the main distribution. So as you’d expect, this immediately boosted its numbers right out of the gate. Selling six million copies in its first four months, it quickly outpaced its predecessor and never looked back.

Batman: Arkham City was released 10 years ago today, the game that elevated the superhero genre
Considered one of the best games of all time,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

reportedly sold over 12.5 million copies and generated $600M+ revenue and was the highest selling Superhero game at that time.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

— DCWorldTelugu (@DCWorldTelugu)

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This isn’t to say that all the other Batman games are bad. While Arkham Asylum laid the groundwork and sold an impressive 9.5 million copies, it didn’t have the same mass appeal due to its more linear structure. As for the games that came after, Arkham Knight and Origins brought big improvements to many aspects, but also made equally big mistakes that ultimately cost them.

It’s unlikely that we ever get something like it again

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

There’s also the nostalgia factor. Arkham City occupies a special place in the hearts of gamers who played it during a peak ******* for story-driven action games. It was a time when game developers were starting to figure out open-world design, and back then, it was the best execution we’d ever seen.

This sense of novelty can’t easily be recreated, and no sequel, however improved, can replicate the magic of playing the game for the first time. This is also why, for many fans, the movie is not just the best Batman game, but the best superhero game ever made.

So yeah, Arkham City wasn’t just a great game, it was the right game at the right time. The game was great in every aspect we saw of it. It had the perfect balance of gameplay, story, technical features, and so much more. Unless we get a future game that recaptures that lightning in a bottle, the 12.5 million sales record will most likely stay unbeaten.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Batman #Games #Beat #Arkham #Citys #Million #Sales #Record

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up