Battlefield 3 conquered strong competition to finish ahead of Batman: Arkham City, NBA 2K12, and Rage in the October sales report from the NPD group. Making the win all the more impressive, these figures do not include digital distribution sales. NPD analyst Anita Frazier said, "given its strong heritage in PC gaming, I would expect that there were notable sales that occurred via digital downloading as well."

On the hardware front, the Xbox 360 chalked up another winning month, boasting a 20 percent increase in sales over last October. In a tweet, Microsoft chief of staff for interactive entertainment Aaron Greenberg revealed that the company sold 393,000 Xbox 360s giving it a market leading 44 percent share. At publication time neither Sony nor Nintendo have provided specific figures for their hardware sales. Nintendo's 3DS handheld came in second and as we just reported is on track to surpass first-year DS sales. Check out the full top ten software list after the jump.

Top ten selling games for October with platforms available and release date:
• Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC) -- (10/25/11)

• Batman: Arkham City (360, PS3) -- (10/18/11)

• NBA 2K12 (360, PS3, PSP, Wii, PS2, PC) -- (10/4/11)

• Rage (360, PS3, PC) -- (10/4/11)

• Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360) -- (10/7/11)

• Dark Souls (PS3, 360) -- (10/4/11)

• Madden NFL 12 (360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP) -- (08/30/11)

• Forza Motorsport 4 (360) -- (10/11/11)

• Gears of War 3 (360) -- (09/22/11)

• FIFA Soccer 12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PS2, 3DS) -- (09/27/11)