They should have tried to soften up the market a little by releasing a Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 pack first.

But the DS is for girls. And boys. And dads and mums and everyone else. That is where the PSP failed. It is for 14-28 year old boys/men.

So what, girls don't play GTA?

Then Take2 will license Hannah Montana - and put her in GTA:HM (DS)!

While it's in no means destined for failure, it is quite apparent that the DS and PSP have different deomgraphic focuses. The question is whether a major game like this can have a hardware seller effect amongst that demographic. Which would help a lot more if some other similar games come out. I'm sure if games like Ninja Gaiden, Chinatown wars, Cod and Dementium had all come out around the same time, there would have been a much larger bump amongst that demographic.

The question is, what else is on the horizon?

Right. So eliminating the DS-owners who play Hannah Montana... that leaves a userbase of only 28 million DS owners in Americas alone.

Hardly worth the effort at that point.

Alright. Lets play some devil's advocate here. What is the highest selling DS game that is similar in it's target audience to GTA?

Not just games for gamers, as that would include Mario, Pokemon and Zelda, but I mean similar types of games?
RPG's have had a level of success, though that is a bit more Japanese oriented.

Metroid did 670,000 in NA and Japan. That is pretty good, if not well compared to it's console sales.

Spiderman 2 at .47 million?

look for somewhat realistic games featuring human beings and violence takes you pretty far down the list.

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence did 190,000 in NA and Japan
Assassin's Creed: 170,000 in NA
Call of Duty 4: 140,000 in NA
Ninja Gaiden: 110,000 in NA

Some of those games got great reviews too. Oh sure, Grand Theft Auto commands a lot more attention than those franchises (or at least the port/minor versions of these specific games), but you can't ignore the fact that there have been very few sales of similar types of games.

A remake of the Jack Hill film Switchblade Sisters starring Miley Cyrus as Lace and Emily Osment as Patch would be something to see in a couple of years.

I am really starting to think this guy was molested by someone who looked like Mario when he was a kid.

As usual, I think Pachter will be right, but for the wrong reasons. My reasoning is a bit different.

1. The very best games on the DS, and the ones that are really worth buying, are the ones that you cannot get on any other machine. Like Brain Training, Elite Beat Agents and Phoenix Wright. Half the point of the DS is its uniqueness.

2. A Grand Theft Auto for DS feels, to me, half-assed. It's inevitable that it in the consumers mind gets compared to GTA IV as well as the not so good first two installments of the series. It's not going to be a flattering comparison.

5 million the first year is ridiculous. 1 million, possibly 2. And probably around 500k in the US.