If you prefer your DS games to be full of blood and swearing, don’t get your hopes up in anticipation of any more. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars did not sell on half as well on the DS as Rockstar had hoped, but even with its disappointing performance, it still accounted for almost 50% of the M-rated DS games sold since the DS launched.
There are six other M-rated games on the DS: Resident Evil: Deadly Silence, Dementium: The Ward, Ultimate Mortal Kombat, Theresia, Touch the Dead and C.O.R.E. Essentially, Chinatown Wars sold almost as much as those six games combined, and still failed to meet expectations. Yeah … not very good.
Take Two CEO Ben Feder has only one thing to blame: “Piracy is a real and present danger for our industry and must be addressed, especially in the handheld market. The commercial performance of Chinatown Wars has certainly suffered at the hands of piracy.”
Usually I’d say piracy is a cheap excuse, but considering R4s are popular among the exact kind of people Chinatown Wars was appealing to, I think it’s a good reason for the game’s poor performance. So, R4 users, if you ever want to complain about why the DS is flooded with games like BABIES LOL and LET’S MAKE OUR BRAIN BETTER ROFL, now you know. It’s because publishers would rather sell games to people who won’t rip off a system’s entire library wholesale.
Chinatown Wars ‘suffered due to piracy’ [MCV]
