Will Chinatown Wars Hurt M-Rated Games on the DS?

[Andy Chalk]

Will Chinatown Wars Hurt M-Rated Games on the DS?

The softer-than-expected sales of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars [http://www.rockstargames.com/chinatownwars/] on the Nintendo DS have at least one industry analyst suggesting that developers will be more "cautious" about releasing M-rated games for the system in the future.

Metacritic [http://www.eedar.com/] score of 94.

"It appears the industry may have been over-zealous with initial expectations on how GTA: Chinatown Wars would perform based upon the news it had received one of the highest quality scores for a Nintendo DS title," Divnich said. "It is important to note that there have been many other titles that achieved a quality score above 90 on the ESRB [http://www.nintendo.com/ds] rating). "

Divnich expects the game to turn a profit for Take Two [http://www.take2games.com/] but said that high review scores don't necessarily translate into high levels of sales on the DS, adding that the performance of Chinatown Wars could result in more "caution" among publishers considering M-rated games for the system. "The results from Chinatown are an important benchmark for the industry as it will be the best performing mature-rated title on the Nintendo DS to date coupled with one of the strongest mature-rated game brands," he said.

"EEDAR believes the results of GTA: Chinatown Wars confirms that attempting to release a major AAA title on the Nintendo DS, targeted at a mature demographic, carries significantly elevated risk," Divnich continued. "With the majority of publishers currently taking a risk-adverse stance, we expect this to slow the growth rate of future mature rated titles on the DS."

Source: Edge Online [http://www.edge-online.com/news/mature-market-unprofitable-ds]


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[TsunamiWombat]

I blame Yahtzee!

 

[Internet Kraken]

I don't see why it would.

 

[chimmers]

"It is important to note that there have been many other titles that achieved a quality score above 90 on the Nintendo DS and have failed to sell more than 300,000 units within three months in North America (irrespective of ESRB rating). "

This, I didn't go for it because it didn't look worth my twenty pounds

 

[tendo82]

GTA Chinatown Wars is positioned as a blockbuster on a system that really doesn't position itself as thriving on blockbusters. That's not to say the DS doesn't have genuine blockbusters, because it most certainly does, but Nintendo doesn't push the system as being defined by its games. When you see a DS commercial for Nintendogs it's as much about actually playing the DS as it is what Nintendogs is about.

Console game advertisements don't show people's hands manipulating the controller, an old Gameboy commercials, like the one for Metroid II, used to present the game like it's console brethren. Chinatown Wars is a game that needs that kind of traditional advertisement, which is difficult to do with the DS, to get its message across. Carrie Underwood playing it on her tour bus just wouldn't have the same effect.

 

[Sparrow]

Well, I always thought this would happen. Selling an M-Rated game on a DS is like trying to sell a shotgun to a toddler.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

You've got a logic fart in there: high scores on metacritic + low sales does not equal game not selling because it is mature.

 

[Sergeant M. Fudgey]

"It is important to note that there have been many other titles that achieved a quality score above 90 on the Nintendo DS and have failed to sell more than 300,000 units within three months in North America (irrespective of ESRB rating). "

This, I didn't go for it because it didn't look worth my twenty pounds

Exactly, and honestly, everyone who thinks that the DS wasn't meant for M rated games say "Aye".

 

[toapat]

"It is important to note that there have been many other titles that achieved a quality score above 90 on the Nintendo DS and have failed to sell more than 300,000 units within three months in North America (irrespective of ESRB rating). "

This, I didn't go for it because it didn't look worth my twenty pounds

Exactly, and honestly, everyone who thinks that the DS wasn't meant for M rated games say "Aye".

(Scottish accent)Aye(end accent) GTA is just lame as a 2.5d game, and its a bit too cartoony for a GTA game

 

[righthanded]

I'm sorta interested in picking this up but IV pretty much killed the series for me. If it were a different time/location, yeah, I'd probably have picked it up already but given how not fun IV was, I don't really have my hopes up for this game being fun.

 

[scotth266]

I'm not really suprised. The GTA brand draws parents eyes more than ever with each sequel, so kids are far less likely to get their hands on it. And the older crowd, well, I don;t really know anyone who was gonna rush out and get this. Most of the people I know right now have PSPs or GBAs, or don't care about handhelds.

 

[kawligia]

I just can't imagine Nintendo DS crowd and the GTA crowd overlapping that much. I'm not surprised to hear sales were poor.

 

[Undeed]

I never really saw a reason for M rated games to be on the DS. I'm fairly certain that none of the other iterations of the gameboy had an M rated game.

 

[dcheppy]

Well, we can ignore the fact that I just don't really understand handheld gaming, but it seems to me the most successful handheld games are not miniaturized versions of home console titles. They're the very handheld original titles that thrive. Pokemon, Nintendogs, Tetris, Lumines.

 

[waggmd]

Well this sucks I thought with the release of Chinatown Wars I would expect more Mature titles for my DS oh well.

 

[AceDiamond]

"It is important to note that there have been many other titles that achieved a quality score above 90 on the Nintendo DS and have failed to sell more than 300,000 units within three months in North America (irrespective of ESRB rating). "

This, I didn't go for it because it didn't look worth my twenty pounds

Exactly, and honestly, everyone who thinks that the DS wasn't meant for M rated games say "Aye".

(Scottish accent)Aye(end accent) GTA is just lame as a 2.5d game, and its a bit too cartoony for a GTA game

And coming up next on "didn't play any GTA game except IV..."

Anyway I'm not too surprised. It's a good game (seriously), but I doubt many people would play it anyway, especially given everyone going "noooooo it's not in full 3D it's not true GTA! I am scared!"

Ok not really, I'm using hyperbole there. But as we know most gamers these days are frightened of all things not generic.

 

[Sewblon]

GTA isn't that good without that third dimension. I think it is GTA and not Mature games in general that are incompatible with the Nintendo DS. Also, I think that GTA4 made many people realize that most game journalists are at the mercy of the big publishers. We can still have Mature-rated games on the DS, it isn't the enemy of the hardcore crowd like the Wii is.

 

[Sevre]

Metacritic fails anyway, M-rated games on handhelds are a bad idea partly because the majority of the owners can't buy the games and partly because they never turn out well on a small screen.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Crappy games will hurt the sales of crappy games, I hope.

 

[Aardvark Soup]

I blame piracy for this. The problem is that most of the target audience for this game has a R4. This is probably also the reason why most non-casual games (without the magic money making word Nintendo slapped on the cover) don't sell on the DS. So, if you're a R4 user you should be ashamed of yourself.