Time Warner subsidiary Rocksteady Studios has delayed release of Batman: Arkham Knight from October 2014 to sometime in 2015. Credit: Time Warner/Rocksteady.
Comic book fans won't have to wait till 2016 to get the Batman they deserve. Time Warner Inc. (TWX) subsidiary Rocksteady Studios will bring the Dark Knight back to Gotham with the 2015 release of Batman: Arkham Knight. The one problem? Bats was supposed to be back in October.
Yet investors needn't fret the delay. "I don't think delays hurt sales one bit," said video gaming expert and Geek Legacy Executive Editor Justin Cavender in an emailed statement. "Watch Dogs was supposed to come out in November and has already sold over 4 million copies in its first week of release. Mario Kart 8 took forever to come out and managed to sell 1.2 million copies over the weekend."
He's right. Mario Kart 8 is so big that some are talking about it as the last refuge of a once-doomed platform, the Wii U. Watch Dogs, meanwhile, is attracting so many pirates that enterprising miscreants are using the thieves' PCs to mine bitcoins on the sly. Investors can expect millions more copies of each game to be sold before they're off the shelves completely.
Arkham Knight, with a legacy that dates back to the original Arkham Asylum game, should enjoy similar pent-up demand when it ships. We're already seeing the signs. Gamers have clicked on Rocksteady's Arkham Knight launch trailer over 7.7 million times as of this writing, more than any other video on the studio's "Batman Arkham" YouTube channel and outpacing the initial trailer for Warner's troubled Arkham Origins by more than 300,000 plays. Add it up, and you've the makings of another winner in a franchise that's already sold tens of millions of games.
The Batmobile is one of the major selling points of Batman: Arkham Knight. Credit: Time Warner/Rocksteady.
