Asked by MTV Multiplayer if Nintendo was disappointed by Chinatown Wars' showing, Dunaway said:

It's frustrating, quite frankly. Certainly there have been mature titles - Resident Evil, the first Call of Duty - that have sold over a million units and with something like GTA, there's great content there. We do think it'll have a long tail and we've seen that with a lot of titles across all genres on the DS platform that consumers continue to discover them. par. But part of what's needed is you have to continue to put marketing support behind these titles. It's one of the things we've learned over the past few years. The old dynamic of throw it on TV for a few weeks and forget it isn't going to work, because new consumers are coming in all the time.

See it for yourself in the entire video below:

Nintendo: 'GTA: Chinatown Wars' Frustrating Sales Due To Marketing (Or Lack Thereof) [MTV Multiplayer]

Inside the swivel-hinged brass cookie were two fortunes along with fun, easy to learn Chinese. One taught me how to say fellatio (chui) (bao), and the other taught me how to say your mother (nei) (lo) (mo). Here's hoping you never hear both in the same sentence.

The DSi, sporting two cameras and the ability to download games, hit in April. The DSiLL (XL to folks outside of Japan) is all of that a more, well more in the sense of size, super-sizing the screen and mondo-sizing the stylus.

Of course, there were also games, plenty of games. Here's some of the top titles we reviewed on Kotaku.

What DS or DSi games would you suggest picking up for friends or family?

Art Style: Digidrive

Price: $5 (download for DSi only)
Rating: E
Genre: Puzzle
Subject Matter: The world's only game based on directing traffic, but fun
Value: Not many modes, but very deep gameplay, Tetris-like.
Buy it for: People who want an engrossing puzzle game for their commute — and the only puzzle game built well for one-handed play (good for shaky subway/bus rides.)
Read the Full Review

Art Style: Boxlife

Price: $5 (download for DSi only)
Rating: E
Genre: Uh, puzzle box-folding?
Subject Matter: Work in a factory, fold boxes, live the American dream
Value: Second-best of all DSi Art Style games, based on a clever, deep mechanic, and a bevy of modes and unlockables.
Buy it for: Fans of innovative game design.
Read the Full Review

Art Style: Pictobits

Price: $5 (download for DSi only)
Rating: E
Genre: Block-dropping puzzle game
Subject Matter: A Tetris twist with an artsy retro style
Value: Highest of all downloadable DS games, offering many levels, great nostalgia for old pixel art, and a high-quality full chiptunes soundtrack that re-mixes classic Nintendo themes.
Buy it for: Anyone with a DSi, anyone who is nostalgic for the Nintendo Entertainment System
Read the Full Review

Art Style: Precipice
<
strong>Price: $5 (download for DSi only)
Rating: E
Genre: Puzzle
Subject Matter: Endless Tetris-style game featuring a man climbing falling blocks
Value: Doesn't have any modes, but its core gameplay is long-lasting.
Buy it for: Puzzle game fans and those who enjoy the DSi's innovative Art Style series
Read the Full Review

Bakugan Battle Brawlers

Price: $29.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Marble-shooting, creature-battling action game.
Subject Matter: Based on the wildly popular collectible toy game and cartoon series, Bakugan follows in the footsteps of Pokemon but adds transforming marbles to the mix. The game does a good job of capturing the essence of the franchise.
Value: With a relatively robust single-player campaign and ability to battle up to three friends on one screen in a slew of interactive arenas, this game is a pretty good deal.
Buy it for:fans of Bakugan and maybe even curious fans of Pokemon.
Read the Full Review

Domo Games

Price: $2 each (five games - download for DSi only)
Rating: E
Genre: Music, Sports
Subject Matter: The NHK TV mascot, Domo, stars in five re-purposed mini-games that were originally made in 2002
Value: Low, because the games are not fun.
Buy it for: Only people who love Domo and whom you don't love.
Read the Full Review

Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter

Price: $29.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Action/Adventure
Subject Matter: Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter is a relatively simple adventure game with similarly simple side-scrolling platforming levels and a touching, sometimes sad story. What makes it unique are its drawing features, which let the player customize their hero, what weapons they use and various elements of the game world all via the DS's touch screen.
Value: Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter's main adventure is brief, but the option to create new heroes, which can vary from flower people to ninjas to robots, extends the life of this charming 2D adventure.
Buy it for: the creative kid who may be too young for a more challenging Nintendo DS game.
Read the Full Review

DSi

Price: $169.99
Rating: N/A
Genre: N/A
Subject Matter: The next step for the DS Lite features two cameras and the ability to download games from the Nintendo store.
Value: While the price isn't exorbitant, more than half a year after launch the Nintendo Store is still lacking in quality downloadable titles.
Buy it for: gadgetophiles, people who love Nintendo, children who don't own digital cameras, anyone interested in a DS but who hasn't taken the plunge yet.
Read the Full Review

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

Price: $29.99
Rating: Teen
Genre: Turn-based role-playing strategy
Subject Matter: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is a thoughtful, modern day remake of an 8-bit medieval fantasy classic, telling the turn-based tale of Marth, heir to the throne of Altea who leads a band of soldiers in a tactical revolt against the Shadow Dragon Medeus.
Value: Over twenty five chapters, loads of characters, ample upgrade options, rare weapons via the online shop, and an excessive six levels of difficulty should ensure that your purchase of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is money well spent.
Buy it for: the fan of fantasy, strategy and epic adventure.
Read the Full Review

Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars

Price: $34.99
Rating: Mature
Genre: Open world action-adventure
Subject Matter: Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars is a 3D, top-down adventure, putting players in the shoes of Huang Lee, a spoiled son of a Chinese gangster. The typical Grand Theft Auto rise to power through sex, drugs, violence and bad driving flows over the course of the game.
Value: There's a lengthy story to be told, with Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars throwing in plenty of side missions and mini-games to keep the player interested.
Buy it for: the Nintendo DS owner sadly lacking in over-the-top violent content.
Read the Full Review

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Price: $39.99
Rating: Teen
Genre: Action RPG
Subject Matter: An action RPG that bridges the gap between Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. Value: While those not familiar with the Kingdom Hearts franchise will find themselves a bit lost story-wise, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is a lengthy game that fans will love for the back story and RPG fans will enjoy for its depth.
Buy it for: Anyone who is a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series.
Read the Full Review

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

Price: $34.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Action RPG
Subject Matter: Mario, Luigi and their nemesis Bowser band together to fend off a common foe in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. As role-playing games go, it's heavy on the action, light on the story and packed with memorable, humorous characters.
Value: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story offers a lengthy adventure, about 20 hours worth of play time, but after the story's complete, there's little incentive to return to the game.
Buy it for: the younger gamer looking for a long, not too challenging experience (or anyone with a Nintendo DS and a sense of humor).
Read the Full Review

Mario Vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again

Price: $8 (download for DSi only)
Rating: E
Genre: Lemmings-like puzzler
Subject Matter: Mainpulate girders and gadgets to enable Mario toys to march to their goals.
Value: Very high due to a generous amount of levels and a level-editor that supports downloaded user-made maps.
Buy it for: Fans of brain-bending puzzle games, as the solutions to some of these levels are hard to engineer.
Read the Full Review

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Price: $34.99
Rating: E
Genre: Adventure/Puzzle
Subject Matter: The Professor and his protégé, Luke, are out to solve a mystery surrounding a man who never ages and box that kills all who open it.
Value: With a crazy amount of puzzles and a new puzzles to download every week, this is one game that won't ever be very far from your DS during those long commutes.
Buy it for: Yourself and anybody you actually want to give a good gift to.
Read the Full Review

Rhythm Heaven

Price: $29.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Music/Rhythm
Subject Matter: Rhythm Heaven is a loosely connected series of rhythmic and musical challenges with very simple controls, requiring little more than good timing and simple touchscreen tapping. Simplistic though it may be, Rhythm Heaven is inventive and fun.
Value: There are dozens of mini-games to unlock and play, with sound toys and more serious challenges for the player who masters Rhythm Heaven's main mode.
Buy it for: anyone with Nintendo DS that can keep a beat or longs for more WarioWare style mini-game fun.
Read the Full Review

Scribblenauts
Price: $29.99
Rating: E10+
Genre: Open world, spell-checking puzzle action game.
Subject Matter: Scribblenauts brings just about anything you can spell to life in the game, backing up a stunningly large visual dictionary with a web of interactions that can surprise and amuse as you work out how to solve puzzles.
Value: With 150 puzzles and 150 action levels, and the ability to use more than 22,800 words to figure out what to do, this is one of the best values this year in gaming.
Buy it for: children learning to spell, people who love lateral thinking and anyone with a sense of humor.
Read the Full Review

Today sees the introduction of two new features to the Rockstar Social Club to help players of both the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable versions of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars enhance their play. First up is the Peking Duck Hunt, an arcade-style web-based game that allows PSP players to earn cash for their game while they aren't playing, much like Mr. Wong's before it. Then there's the Chinatown Wars Guide Map, an interactive map that shows the locations of every Drug Dealer, Security Camera, Rampage, and Stunt Jump in town, tracking what you and your friends have accomplished to see who is the rightful owner of bragging privileges.

Rockstar has also added new papercraft models from the game, including Ling and Uncle Kenny, an assortment of weapons, and several vehicles straight from the streets of Liberty City.

Visit Rockstar's Newswire page for full details on the new additions.

Here's the video. You can check out Totilo's impressions of the game while you wait for it to release.

I never played the DS version of Chinatown Wars, and in a way I am glad I didn't. Now I can play the PSP version when it drops on October 20th without having to obsessively compare it to the version released for Nintendo's handheld. Still, I can't help but compare the screenshots I've seen of both versions, and these PSP screens do look prettier by far.

Chinatown Wars is the new version of Rockstar's 2009 return to top-down Grand Theft Auto gaming, rebuilt for Sony's handheld. The DS version was the best-reviewed game on Nintendo's portable (Read our GTA: Chinatown Wars DS review to see why).

Rockstar Games presented the PSP game to me as a more ergonomically friendly version of Chinatown Wars. I had played through the DS game happily and comfortably, with my thumbs on the d-pad and buttons and stylus cradled in my left hand, ready to be used at a moment's notice. But some people literally couldn't handle it. They'd have benefited from a third hand or the dexterity to wield their DS stylus with their teeth.

Chinatown Wars PSP, the Rockstar rep showing me the game told me, was engineered to allow players to keep their hands in constant contact with the PSP. No reaching for another control instrument for this game.

I expected that added comfort to come at a cost. I believed that the DS' touchscreen gameplay, which I had found more charming than gimmicky, would not make a successful transition to the PSP.

The PSP has no touch screen, yet Chinatown Wars DS had included a lot of smartly-made touch-screen snippets that zoomed in during typical chaotic GTA action to force momentary concentration on a more focused goal: Flicking change into a toll booth; shocking a heart to keep it alive; smashing the window of a sinking car; rummaging through trash to find a gun.

The folks at Rockstar told me this content was adjusted for the PSP version, not cut. For proof, I asked if I could hotwire one of the game's cars. I moved GTA CW protagonist Huang Lee toward a car and had hm break into it. If this had been the DS game, the lower screen would have switched to a close-up view of the dashboard and a touchscreen challenge would have begun to twist wires or punch in a code to deactivate the alarm system. On the PSP, a small comic-book-panel inset box emerged on the left side of the system's screen, right next to where my thumb was on the analog stick. Rotating arrows showed me which way to turn the stick to unscrew a panel on the dashboard and how to twist two wires together to get the car going. The interface was smooth. My apprehension about converting touch-based challenges to stick-based challenges diminished greatly.

I drove through Liberty City to see the sights. The metropolis is rendered as it was on the DS, still top-down, still with extraordinary detail and vertical depth, just in widescreen with better textures, sharper resolution and improved lighting.

The game's map and missions haven't been changed, the Rockstar rep said. But I found that the game will play a little differently. Interface tweaks enable the player to throw grenades while still maintaining control of their car. The presence of the mini-map on the same screen as the one your character or car is on is also a game-changer. I found Chinatown Wars DS hard to play without the option turned on to render GPS routes as colored lines on the city's roadways. Without it, I could barely tolerate having to glance away from the top DS screen where the action usually was in order to look at the lower screen to view the map. With the PSP's mini-map on the same screen as the action, that aggravation is remedied — though I like the GPS option enough that I'd probably still use it.

Rockstar is adding six radio stations to the PSP game, though sticking to the all-instrumental style of the DS release. New rampage and other variations on Chinatown Wars' side missions have been programmed for the PSP release. The most prominent of the new content may be the addition of video documentary maker Melanie Mallard. I played one of her missions, keeping her alive while Lee raided a drug warehouse. The first game had very few moments of indoor action; this new mission was full of it, playing out almost as a GTA-ized ode to Gauntlet. Mallard hung back with her camera; Huang Lee had to make sure she didn't die.

The iPhone/iPod version of Chinatown Wars wasn't announced yet when Rockstar showed me the PSP iteration, so I don't have details on how its controls and content compare to the DS and PSP games. I also wasn't able to get a clear answer from Rockstar yet about when the PSP version was greenlit. It is attractive enough and has tight enough controls that it doesn't feel like a rushed port, whether it was one or not. What it does feel like is an appropriate modification of an entertaining and content-rich game, a return to GTA's top-down roots that can soon be enjoyed by non-DS owners.

I had expected something a little clumsy with the PSP version of the game. Instead, GTA: Chinatown Wars, at first play, appears and feels to be smooth. The game will be out as a disc or download game for PSP on October 20.

While we were expecting Beaterator thanks to model Jacquetta Wheeler, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the iPhone comes as a complete surprise. Rockstar's Sam Houser explains why these two titles are perfect for the iPhone.

"The simple, pick-up-and-play nature of Beaterator lends itself so well to the Apple platforms. We are happy to deliver an application that allows for such unprecedented sharing and ease-of-use."

And what about Chinatown Wars? "Chinatown Wars is a perfect match for the iPhone and iPod touch. We are very excited to bring this incredibly ambitious version of Liberty City, with this level of detail and immersive gameplay on Apple's new gaming platforms."

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was only recently confirmed for the Sony PSP. The iPhone version should combine that version's enhanced graphics with the Nintendo DS version's touch screen controls. The two great tastes that taste great together? We'll find out this fall.

It looks like they've done a fine job of maintaining the top-down perspective of the DS version, while cleaning up the graphics and sprucing up the lighting effects to better take advantage of the PSP's power. I actually think that the Chinatown Wars look might work better than trying to mimic the look of the console games like Rockstar did with the PSP Stories series.

Of course looks aren't everything, so we have to wonder how it plays. Luckily we won't be wondering long; we'll have a full hands-on report on Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the PSP next week.

The official release date for the new GTA was announced on Rockstar's official Twitter feed.

Rockstar has been quiet about how they are transforming the game that launched this past March on DS into a PSP game, maintaining for months simply that the Chinatown Wars will be rebuilt for the PSP.

But how will the game look in widescreen and on only one screen instead of the DS' two? How will the touch elements of the DS game — which were used for everything from breaking out of a sinking car to dropping change in a toll booth to defibrillating a heart — be changed to work on the non-touch PSP? Will the non-vocal soundtrack get vocals for the PSP?

Nary a screen nor much answer has been released by Rockstar yet.

While announcing GTA: Chinatown Wars for PSP back in June, a Rockstar release indicated that the game will be "specifically built for the PSP platform with upscaled widescreen graphics, enhanced lighting and animation and including all new story missions."

We hope to be playing the game at Rockstar soon and will have full coverage as soon as we're allowed to spill details.

The game will be available on PSP both on disc and as a digital download. Notably, it will not quite be a PSPgo launch title, as Sony's no-disc-drive version of the PSP will launch on October 1, 19 days before Chinatown Wars hits.

Rockstar's other fall GTA content, the GTA IV expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony, as well as the compilation of that and an earlier expansion to GTA IV, will be released on October 29.

C.O.P. The Recruit is all about a petty criminal who becomes a one man episode of Miami Vice set in New York City. Rather than using the DS to capture the city in a bird's eye view the way that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars does, The Recruit renders New York in 3D open world on the upper screen and uses the lower screen for inventory, maps and objective details. So while the game might resemble parts and concepts of other games and TV crime procedural shows, it really is a fresh take on DS gaming.

What Is It?
C.O.P. The Recruit is an open world shooter/adventure game with 60 some-odd missions and six square miles of city to explore. Like GTA games on consoles, the game is made up of three primary parts: shooting, driving and the occasional mini game. Right now, I'm told the ratio in The Recruit is 30-50-20.

What We Saw
I played through a couple of early main story missions. Then I watched the developer jump to a later mission to show off the "catching up" cut scene feature where the game splices together pieces of cut scenes and text to explain what you're supposed to be doing.

How Far Along Is It?
The Recruit is due out this fall.

What Needs Improvement?
Too Much Driving: Your character can commandeer pretty much any car in the whole game by standing in front of it to make it stop and then pressing one of the face buttons. This is fun for the first five minutes of driving across town to a mission, but it rapidly becomes un-fun when you spend all your time bumping into other cars or trying to navigate around Central Park. At times, The Recruit feels more like a driving sim than an open world crime adventure game.

What Should Stay The Same?
Nice Shooting Controls: Tapping your weapon with the stylus (or poke it with your fingernail) in the lower screen snaps the upper screen's third-person view into an over-the-shoulder view so you can shoot people. Basic movement still gets done with the D-pad as with the rest of the game, but to adjust aim or turn left, right, up, or down, you have to drag the stylus along the lower screen – which feels more intuitive than it sounds. To fire the weapon, you can double tap the lower screen or squeeze the left shoulder button.

Impressive Scope: There is so much to do in this game. Besides the 60 missions, there are five different times of day you can view the city in (depending on which missions you're playing) and the city itself is so big for a DS game. Even if the driving gets a bit monotonous, it seems like the variations in missions will make up for the dull bits – and you can always commandeer boats when you get sick of cars. In the 20 minutes I spent plowing through the early part of the game, I could be doing anything from shooting criminals to putting out fires (because apparently the NYC Fire Department is always late) and the lone mini game I played where you had to pick out a redhead on a series of security cameras certainly felt like a nice change of pace.

Final Thoughts
This game is invariably going to be compared to Grand Theft Auto and I think what The Recruit lacks in hookers, it hopes to make up for with its story. Twenty minutes really wasn't enough time to get a feel for the story, but if it's even half as solid as the shooting gameplay seems to be, I'm optimistic.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars' 18-and-up rating isn't anything new for the series. The Japanese software ratings board CERO shows all GTA titles as Z-rated, including the two PSP entries in the series. But no other DS game has managed to secure that behind-the-counter letter rating.

Perhaps that's why Cyberfront, not Capcom, is publishing Chinatown Wars in Japan. Typically, the Japanese distribution of Grand Theft Auto games is handled by Capcom, often to success. But for Chinatown Wars, the publisher of the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV will be taking the reins.

Maybe Capcom was turned off by the atypically moderate sales of Chinatown Wars in the face of releasing a Z-rated Nintendo DS game. We'll see if this is indicative of a trend when the PSP version of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is released for the PSP in the country.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Will Be The First "Z" Rated DS Game [Siliconera]

"We're proud to extend this truly unique handheld Grand Theft Auto experience to PSP and offer a downloadable version of Chinatown Wars for PSPgo," said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. "Rockstar Leeds has shown incredible talent in creating games that raise the bar in terms of depth and innovation on portables, and with Chinatown Wars we have a rich, fast-paced, and incredibly addictive entry into the series."

Despite record review scores, Chinatown Wars sold just 89,000 copies on the DS in it's first month on shelves, leading some to wonder if the DS was a good platform for mature gaming.

It will be interesting to see how Chinatown Wars sales compare on the PSP when it hits in North America and Europe this fall. It could prove that piracy, not maturity, was the real culprit in those sales after all.

"Rockstar's work with the GTA series has been an enormous part of the success of PlayStation platforms," said Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America. "We're excited to welcome the critically acclaimed Chinatown Wars to the outstanding line-up of great games headed to the PSP platform this fall."

The game will be available as both a digital download on the Playstation Network and on UMD.

I've now checked the completion stats online for Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars three times: in mid-April, mid-May and mid-June. These stats are listed on the Rockstar Social Club website. They don't represent a GTA:CW player's mere completion of the acclaimed DS games' story. They indicate that a player has unlocked the game's Guardian Lions statues, which means they have finished the game's story and synced their DS to Rockstar's site twice.

The game was released in mid-March and less than a month later, 1,900 people had done all of that. A month later, that number was at 4,500. Today, a little over a month since I last checked, the figure is at 5,893. (Check the GTA: Chinatown Wars stats yourself, registration required.)

Some might draw a correlation between the completion stats and the sales of Chinatown Wars. I won't, because there's no telling what the norm is for someone both buying a game and then going to the lengths required to get listed on Rockstar's site.

But this is still a figure we can track, to gauge how much interest the game holds for players and how many more make it to the finish line worldwide, each month. It's easy to lose sight of the life a game has beyond its release. Here we have a sign of activity we can keep checking until Rockstar turns their feature off.

The company that's been riding high on its own Wii and DS successes has recently had some trouble convincing people that marquee games from publishers other than Nintendo can do well on Nintendo's machines.

Sega's hardcore-hyped MadWorld launched on the Wii with 66,000 copies sold in the U.S. in March, according to the NPD group.

Take Two's Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars — the best-reviewed game on the DS — launched that same month with fewer than 90,000 copies sold in the U.S.

"There is no magic number that says x = profitability," Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told Kotaku during our E3 interview last week, further clarifying earlier comments on the matter.

Two non-Nintendo games he expects to perform well are Sega's The Conduit and EA's Dead Space Extraction, both first-person games with a darker tone that Nintendo's standard. "I am really optimistic about The Conduit," he said. "I think it looks great, plays great. I think Dead Space Extraction is going to be fabulous given the early builds that I've seen. So, I do think that we will continue to see not only great titles, but great sales, on higher-rated M and T type of titles on our platforms."

Fils-Aime addressed the seeming struggles of some of those M-rated games on Wii and DS from earlier this year.

As other Nintendo reps have said before him, Fils-Aime thinks Chinatown Wars may have been counted out too soon by people focusing on its launch numbers. "In the handheld space, with Nintendo platforms specifically — whether it's Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS — the fact is that first month sales really don't matter," he said. "You have a title like Mario Kart, in its first month, a holiday month that did just over 200,000 copies. New Super Mario Brothers, which launched in the summer, did over 150,000 in its first month. Those are not huge numbers, yet both of those have gone on to sell more than four million units apiece and to be in the top 10 total industry titles for the last two years running. So, first month doesn't matter in the handheld space as long as it's a high-quality game, which Chinatown Wars is, has some continuous level of marketing support — whether its retail marketing, consumer marketing, online — as long as you keep the buzz going it will continue to sell millions and millions. And that's my expectation for Chinatown Wars. As long as the team at Take Two and Rockstar give it a long life, it will do very well."

Reggie said he would have liked to have seen higher sales for MadWorld but doesn't think its launch counts out other M-rated Wii games. "The challenge with home console is that for a 'gamer game' you need to have the buzz and the expectation early and you need to support the title for a number of months to drive the sales. On both of those fronts, I'm not sure MadWorld was able to do that."
It's not an M-rated Wii game, but EA Sports Active just had a blockbuster debut of supposedly more than 600,000 copies sold in its first two weeks, according to EA.

Those are the arguments. Don't count Wii and DS third-party games out for 2009 yet, Nintendo says. There will plenty of high profile games to test that.

The Conduit is out this month. Dead Space Extraction ships in September.

According to NPD Group data from Gamasutra, the Nintendo DS title from Rockstar Games managed to move another 74,000 copies in the United States. A drop from the 89,000 copies sold in its first month on the market, but not a dramatic one. But Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars NPD per day (NPD-PD) sales tell a slightly different story.

Chinatown Wars was only on sale for 19 days in March, giving us an average of 4,684 copies sold per day.

In April, the DS game had 28 days to shine, according to the NPD Group's reporting period. That's an average of 2,642 copies per day. That drop is more considerable.

That decrease may be made more dramatic by the increase in Nintendo DS hardware sold during the month. With the introduction of the Nintendo DSi, the portable dual-screen platform sold through almost twice as many units in the United States on a month to month basis.

With 827,000 new Nintendo DSi owners on the market, one might think fans of committing touchscreen crimes would be holding out for bigger screens to play their Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on. But it appears they'd rather play New Super Mario Bros. instead.

NPD: GTA: Chinatown Wars Continues Steady Sales In 2nd Month [Gamasutra]

When last I checked to see how many people had jumped through the hoops to access the final two missions of Chinatown Wars, it was April 9 and 1,912 people had pulled it off.

They had finished the game's main missions, logged onto development studio Rockstar's hub website, synced their DS to that site, had that syncing operation deposit two statues in their game, found the statues, re-synced their stats and gotten themselves onto the listing of others who have done the same.

The game had been released on March 17, three weeks before I did my first count.

One month since that count, that number is 4,458, as can be seen on the Rockstar Social Club site (registration required). That many people have taken all the above steps, giving themselves new content and giving Rockstar a good look at their gaming stats.

(I'm #34 on that list. But I had an edge. Rockstar had hooked me up with a copy of the game for review a little early.)

We don't know how much Chinatown Wars has sold globally, but it had sold 89,000 copies in the U.S. by April 4. Those numbers aren't enough to indicate what percentage of Chinatown Wars players have completed the game.

But it's a small enough percentage to make gamers who have done it still feel special.

Chinatown War [deviantArt via Tiny Cartridge]

A popular argument is that Nintendo's portable is for kids and soccer moms only, something that the Japanese developer and publisher has spent years now fighting to disprove.

Last month Rockstar Games, the developer known as much for the adult themes of their games as they are for the quality of their superb titles, took a gamble to disprove that notion, releasing Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS.

Expectations for the open-world, high-production value game ran high with analysts predicting 200,000 to 450,000 in sales in the first month. But instead the game moved a paltry 89,000, according to the NPD Group.

Proof that the DS isn't a good fit for hardcore gaming? It's a bit more complicated than that.

"Chinatown Wars received critical acclaim and is the highest rated DS title of all time," said Alan Lewis, vice president of corporate communications for Take-Two, which owns Rockstar Games. "In terms of performance, we think it is performing in line with other triple-A games on the platform."

Lewis points out that the game was only on sale for 19 days in March, adding that the game is the highest unit selling M rated title in its launch month and already the second highest selling M rated title on the DS.

"We are very confident in Chinatown Wars long-term potential for success," he said. "We think it will have a long life in the market."

Analysts agree that Chinatown Wars' potential success will be measured over the long haul, rather than the short one. Though Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter thinks that the early low sales could mean it will be quite awhile before we see another deep game developed for adults on the DS.

"It's shocking that sales were 89,000 because it is a really well known franchise, a really high rated game," Pachter said. "There is no way you can say it didn't do well because people didn't know about it or it's bad."

What that leaves, Pachter says, is evidence that either the DS audience is too young or disinterested in deeper, longer games to play on the DS.

"This is really the first hardcore, mature game for the DS," he said. "I think there certainly won't be another for the next two or three years. It will take a bold publisher to put something else like this out there."

EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich says he wasn't surprised by Chinatown Wars initial low sales numbers.

"When you release a big DS game like this, it's for the long term," he said. "It's not like an in and out thing, like you would see for the console. With the DS, games have a lot longer legs than any other

Nintendo seems to agree.

"Remember that many games for Nintendo DS have a nontraditional sales pattern," said Denise Kaigler, Nintendo of America's vice president of corporate affairs. "The trend is toward ‘evergreen' games that sell well over an extended period of time instead of in a one-month spike. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for Nintendo DS is a good example. In its first month (November 2007), it sold only 36,000. To date, it has sold through nearly 500,000. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a great game that has received tremendous reviews. We expect that with continued backing, it will follow the same long-tail/evergreen sales route that other top sellers have taken."

Divnich says that like Nintendo he expects Chinatown Wars will see similarly big numbers in the long run, but recognizes that the game faces an uphill battle compared to something like Pokémon. Pokémon Platinum was the second highest selling game in March, with 805,000 copies sold.

"It's really an apple to oranges comparison," Divnich said. "You are targeting two different markets. The people who buy Pokémon, that's the main consumer for the DS."

And that's sort of the point that it seems Rockstar was trying to disprove. The question now is, will Rockstar and other third-party publishers still be willing to wait for long-term sales on future deep, adult games or will they instead move back to the casual and the kiddy for the DS.

"We have and we will continue to support the platform," Take-Two's Lewis told me. "We think the mature segment of the DS market is growing."

Well Played is a weekly opinion column about the big news of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

According to a report from Silicon Alley Insider, there's a very good reason that Chinatown Wars didn't crack the top ten. While analyst estimates on first month sales ranged from a conservative 200,000 to a more hopeful 450,000, actual sales look to have come in under 90,000. With almost three weeks worth of sales accounted for, that's not what we'd call encouraging.

When compared to the most recent release, Grand Theft Auto IV, it's downright dismal. GTA IV moved over 2.8 million copies in its first month, when the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game launched last April.

We'd say that doesn't bode well for Mature-rated games on Nintendo's portable platform.

According to SIA, Take-Two sounds hopeful that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will continue to sell, pointing out that March was not a stellar month for the industry.

Take-Two's 'Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars' Bellyflops [Silicon Alley Insider]