GTA: Chinatown Wars sells 89K units in March

by Alexander Sliwinski on Apr 16th 2009 9:30PM

Proving the analysts wrong, GTA: Chinatown Wars launched far below their prognostications in March with a mere 89,000 units sold, NPD has confirmed to Joystiq. The game was expected to show that a high-profile M-rated franchise like GTA could perform well on Nintendo's handheld. With a mere 0.3% of the 29.3 million DS units sold in the US rocking the crime drama, that could be interpreted as not being a good sign for more big M-rated titles on the system.

Despite incredibly solid reviews, it appears that Chinatown Wars has quite the hill to climb towards analyst projections. Perhaps only having a half-month of sales is the issue, with the crime caper releasing March 17 ... maybe next month will be kinder.

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Tags: DS, grand-theft-auto, gta-chinatown-wars, Nintendo, rockstar-games, take-two, take-two-interactive

Reader Comments (155)

It bombed in sales because of PIRACY. The +18 age group it was directed to have the most DS pirates.

But this game is, without a doubt, the best DS game and probably the best handheld game ever.

Should have made it a "proper" GTA game and just put it on the PSP, double the sales, at least.

Once again, you gloss over the detail that Nintedo games tend to sell at a slower but more steady pace.

But this site is starting to turn into an anti-nintendo fanboy website anyways, and of course wouldn't recognize that detail.

It's really not the kind of game that sells well on the DS. Other titles with similar pedigrees haven't-the call of duty games and james bond games you can get for under 20 usd new. And they aren't bad games, despite the limitations of the system.

I didn't buy a DS to play grand theft auto on it, I bought it to play all the great RPGs and quirky/casual games like hotel dusk or space invaders extreme.