Publisher Warner Bros and developer Rocksteady have to be pretty pleased with the news that despite some negative bumps in the road with the DLC codes, Batman: Arkham City is out of the gate with a bang with 4.6 million copies sold in the first week.

Besides selling 4.6 million copies in the first week, the review numbers have made it one of the highest rated titles released in 2011. All this is good news for Warner Interactive and Rocksteady. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the title are averaging between 95 and 96 on Metacritic, which is excellent, and the sales number are showing that.

While Arkham City is hot out of the gate, a couple of other upcoming releases could match the Metacritic numbers that it was able to put up. Still, the sales numbers are further evidence that the end of the year is going to be big for software sales and the strategy of releasing titles going into the holiday season always helps pump the sales numbers up.