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Forums - Sales - Re-evaluating Chinatown Wars' "failure"

Star Scream on 29 March 2009

Budget is surely lower than GTA4's, but it's higher than the ones for LCS and VCS. According to Rockstar Leeds, it's their biggest project ever, they spent 2 years (and with massive team) on it.

I still think it's too early to judge its sales.



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Demotruk on 29 March 2009

I think kids are a huge part of GTA's demographic, I remember it being found in a study too, not just in my own experience. However, I think among that demographic there are alot who think Nintendo consoles are 'uncool'(I'm talking among male teens), in spite of the fact that they're the more popular consoles outside of that group.



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It is largely a technical exercise but feedback is appreciated.

Zlejedi on 29 March 2009
Declan said:

2) CW is an 18-rated game.  I really don't know what the average age DS owners is, but school kids undoubtedly account for a large proportion of them.

If the target audience for a GTA game is males who are over 18, people shouldn't be looking for huge numbers from CW.  The target audience may account for less than a quarter of DS owners.

Making game 18+ only is like putting huge magnet for all the teenages out there :D

and let's face it GTA as a whole is series aimed at teenage gamers who want "mature" gameplay.



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coasterlove on 29 March 2009

Idea- Lets wait a few weeks and see what the sales numbers are.

I know, it's a wild idea.



I'll come up with something better eventually...

scottie on 29 March 2009

Can Oyv win the "VGChartz maths award for that post" ??

Anyway, Declan. The golden rule on this site is "never judge a DS or Wii game until at least a month after release. preferably more like 3 months"



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sparkit34 on 29 March 2009

I can only think of a handful of third party DS games that have sold as much as GTA in the first week. I actually thought it was a really strong opening!!!



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Declan on 29 March 2009

I never said not to wait to see how sales of this game progress - I was simply raising some points for those already writing it off to think about.



TWRoO on 29 March 2009
Oyvoyvoyv said:
TWRoO said:
Star Scream said:
I think the problem here is that some half of the DS users (according to Nintendo) are female. That's why stuff like Leyton and Cooking Mama charted better than Chinatown Wars. I think Rockstar themselves said they hoped Chinatown Wars would expand DS audience...


And maybe it will, even though the opening was less than impressive. There's a DSi launch in a few days, and maybe people will pick up CTW with it...

Half in Japan.

In the USA it is only 27%.... though for last years buyers it was 48% (which means that 27% is increasing)

 

As of when is the 27%?

If both are as of end of the year...That means
Let's say there was a 50-50 split last year.
That's 6M - 6M (a bit less on both sides).

The total DS sales are 31.6M. So, the total is 8.5M women, 23.1M men.
Before the year, the result had then been
2.5M women, 17M men.

Obviously, that's not the case. So the 27% data has to be 3/4 of a year, or more, old.

If you say it is as of the end of July 2008, that results in.
Men - 18.25M
Women - 6.75M

If the sales have been split 55-45 since then, that leaves us with
Men - 22.5M
Women - 10.75M

And I'm guessing the data is older. It's probably at around 33% now I'd assume.

Well I ot it from joystiq's live blog of Iwata's keynote speech:
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/25/joystiq-live-from-nintendos-gdc-2009-keynote/

Although I recalled the 47% wrongly as 48%.

9:44AM "Here in America, over 20% of Wii owners had no other video game system in their house when they made their purchase. These players have to be considered expanded audience." In 2008, NPD found that 47% of DS players were female – 27% life to date.


It's possible there was a misinterpretation and the 27% was the Life-to date from the end of 2007, then you add 2008s sales, but it doesn't imply that in the blog (I really wish someone had been able to video this so we can see hiim speak every word, live blogs are so hard to trust when some of them make mistakes)

 



SaviorX on 29 March 2009

I actually thought its sales were good.

Wasn't it in the top 5 worldwide with 140k this week?



Leatherhat on July 6th, 2012 3pm. Vita sales:"3 mil for COD 2 mil for AC. Maybe more. "  thehusbo on July 6th, 2012 5pm. Vita sales:"5 mil for COD 2.2 mil for AC."

coolestguyever on 29 March 2009

Well firstly I'll say I agree a lot of DS owners are females and people too young to play CW.

But what about PS2? I know it was mostly men probably who owned it, but I'm sure tons of young kids had a PS2 due to all the casual/sports/racing type games that were appropriate for them. And San Andreas managed a whopping 17 million units sold. I expected much more out of CW. Maybe it will have legs, lets wait and see.