Rockstar may have had high hopes with its first adult-oriented title on the DS handheld, but Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars has sold well below expectations. The recent NPD sales figures for March 2009 show that the game sold only a paltry 88,704 units in North America. This is despite the game having scored a phenomenal 94 overall on metacritic, wowing game journalists and bloggers alike. Chinatown Wars certainly brings the fun back to GTA, but why aren't people buying it?

Certainly, piracy has to be partly to blame. Many of the same adult gamers who own a Nintendo DS and might have bought this release also engage in piracy, thanks to the availability of devices like the R4 linker. A quick scan of popular torrent sites shows that GTA: Chinatown Wars has been downloaded at least 120,000 times since launch. Those are potential sales that, when added to the actual numbers for March, no longer look quite so depressing.

Still, we are used to the days when a new Rockstar release on any platform would be a guaranteed million seller within a few months. This doesn't appear to be ready to happen on the DS, even with its massive installed base of over 40 million users. Interestingly, another adult-themed release on a Nintendo console, Madworld, failed to sell impressive numbers last month as well. Perhaps core gamers really have moved away from Nintendo hardware, and mature game titles are no longer viable on either machine.

Given the huge sales disparity between GTA: Chinatown Wars and the two PSP titles Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, we think another handheld PSP installment is almost guaranteed. And who knows, maybe if the rumored PSP 2 comes with a touch screen, a version of Chinatown Wars might even make an appearance on Sony's handheld.

Source : PVG.com