Back to the drawing board! The experiment of releasing mature content on DS has produced hugely disappointing results. DS gamers just don't play GTA it seems.
by James Brightman on Thursday, April 16, 2009
During this past week, analysts were speculating about how many units Take-Two's GTA: Chinatown Wars for DS actually sold. On the low end was EEDAR's Jesse Divnich who predicted sales of 200K and noted that mature titles on the DS carry "significant risk" for publishers. As it turns out, the game couldn't even break 100K – NPD has just confirmed with GameDaily BIZ that it sold a paltry 89K units (even more paltry considering the large DS installed base) and failed to make the top 20, let alone the top 10.
This has to come as a serious disappointment to Take-Two, which will likely be re-evaluating its Nintendo platforms strategy going forward. If GTA: Chinatown Wars was a major test case for whether the DS audience would support mature content, it's not very encouraging. If we had to guess, Take-Two and Rockstar will likely return to the PSP for its portable versions of GTA - something that should please Sony very much as it continues to ramp up its digital strategy on PSP. Imagine a PSP exclusive GTA with downloadable episodic content via PSN, much like the Xbox Live-exclusive Lost and Damned.
And GTA for Wii? If the DS and Wii audiences are anything alike (and there has to be a very sizable overlap), then Take-Two will probably not want to take yet another risk with mature content on a Nintendo platform. Expect plenty more Carnival Games and titles that are "family friendly."
http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/grand-theft-auto-chinatown-wars-sells-just-89k/?biz=1
