Batman: Arkham Asylum Ships 2.5 Million

Not to downplay this game's high levels of production, but its sales success should be attributed to the fact that in Canada (and I think in parts of the States) this game retailed at less than $40 during launch week.

Perfect Achievement/Exploration/Unlockables System.

I made most of my comments about the game in a reply below, but I do want to mention one extra thing I forgot to say, the Riddler crap was perfectly done. It was totally optional, but you got awarded exp for it, which motivated you to do it (at least early on before you had all the upgrades) plus they put in maps that were all fairly easy to find but you had to find one for each area. This was brilliant. By doing this you got approximate locations to the "secrets" and "riddles" scattered around, which made it much more fun to find them.

Most games that include a system like this end up with you having to jump between the internet and the game looking up the location of that "last thing I need" or "how the hell does this totally unintuitive puzzle work?!" but being able to open my map and tell for certain that I was in approximately the right area, looking in approximately the right direction, encouraged and allowed me to solve every single side-quest secret and unlockable without any outside help. That was really well done and I was really happy with that design decision. This is the only game where I have ever continued to play after the main story was over just to complete all the extras and the reason was simple, the map made it FUN and ENTERTAINING to do so, as opposed to tedious and time consuming.

This game had only one negative part an it was the goddamn sewers with crock

Glad the tarnished reputation of franchise games has been improved.

Now make a video game movie with the same kind of reception.

great game finished it last night, now time to try the free dlc

The only bad part about the game? That I beat it last night (pc) and now its over. >:(

I'm really glad this game has done so well, it's one of the best games I've played in quite a long time and it really deserves the sales.

GOTY 2009

bad part about game was having detective mode on all the time. the lame boss battles and the fact i beat it. le sigh :)

The only possile way this game could have been better is if it wasn't batman.

makes me wish we heard the same news about Wolfenstein :(

Mark Hamill = Best Joker Ever.

Don't think he'd outdo Heath Ledger? Here's proof.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_7HVcYjM3Y

Sell-in is not sell-through!

I can ship ten million copies to stores, but that doesn't mean they'll all sell.

I hate announcements about how many copies of something get "shipped" that doesn't mean anything.

It sold-through over 500,000 copies in its first week on all platforms. Let's take that and be satisfied with it as solid information, not this BS about how many copies arrived in warehouses.

The best thing about this is, in addition to it being a great game. It just helped Eidos pay for Deus Ex. Talk about a "powerful franchise fused with high-quality production".

This game had a lot going for it, I think the batman TAS cast really really helped.

really there were some amazing sales off this title right from the get go. i bought this new on the 360 for 40 dollars. i wouldnt have even tried the demo and found out i enjoyed the game if i didn't see it at that price. those sales definitely played into their overall numbers

They deserve it, this game really delivered on the expectations (and actually exceeded them IMO). I wonder what the sales projections were.