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Nintendo's focus on "evergreen" titles has been a staple of the publisher for years now, with marketing support lasting longer than ever with this generation's major releases. So it surprised us last April when the company said it hoped "word of mouth" would help push GTA: Chinatown Wars' lackluster initial sales higher as the months progressed. However, when executive vice president Cammie Dunaway recently spoke with MTV Multiplayer, Nintendo's traditional message quickly returned. "Part of what's needed is you have to continue to put marketing support behind these titles."

She also called sales "frustrating, quite frankly," but declined to comment on Rockstar's marketing surrounding the release of the game. Dunaway remained diplomatic through the conversation though, only offering, "The old dynamic of 'throw it on television for a few weeks and then move on and forget it' just doesn't work," giving us little more than a taste of her real feelings behind the release's marketing push. Check out the whole clip after the break.

If we took away one important lesson from Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick yesterday, during the company's investor call, it's this: it takes a lot of time to make "triple-A" games. That's why Zelnick isn't interested in annualizing the Grand Theft Auto franchise. "We don't feel that GTA oughta be an annualized franchise," he said, adding that he was "pleased" the series has been "testing new formats and new platforms" this year with two DLC expansions on Xbox Live and GTA: Chinatown Wars for DS and PSP.

Instead of pushing out a new GTA game every year, Zelnick explained that Take-Two is focused on the "balance between how long it takes to develop such an incredible title that meets consumer expectations and how long you need to make sure than an appetite has been both satisfied and whetted [for the next game]." He padded his point with phrases like "high profitability" and "resiliency of the franchise," though when taken to task over how the publisher expects to make money in a "non-GTA release year" -- and in light of projected, continued losses from its baseball franchise -- he responded, "We remain committed to that goal [of profitability] ... naturally, we are disappointed that we're not projecting to achieve that goal in 2010." Meanwhile, somewhere in California, Bobby Kotick laughed maniacally.

Even if you're playing Grand Theft Auto on a portable system, the Rockstar Social Club is waiting to welcome you with open arms ... and flying ducks. The online hub has just added new features to mark the launch of GTA: Chinatown Wars on PSP.

Aside from some new downloadable papercrafts (joy!) the site has added a minigame called Peking Duck Hunt which you can play to earn in-game cash. Just between you and us though, you'll probably have more fun just skipping straight to the real game.

Meeting with Rockstar yesterday for our first hands-on with the PSP "remastering" of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, we kicked things off with a question that's on everyone's minds: What's happening to the DS version's touch-based minigames? The answer: They're all still in the game, just adapted to a button-based format.

We hotwired a car to try it out and were presented with a comic book panel-like inset that had us rotate the analog stick, time L and R button presses and rotate the stick again. According to Rockstar, similar mods have been made to all the minigames, but no minigames have been added exclusively for the PSP release. (Developer Rockstar Leeds did, however, deem the need to pay bridge tolls unnecessary.)

We were quickly pointed toward some added elements, specifically a new aiming "arc" for lobbing grenades and Molotovs while driving, copious bloom lighting (it was a rainy night) and punched-up explosions. The in-game "PDA" has also been redesigned slightly to mimic the PSP XMB interface.

Check out freshly captured new screens in the gallery below:

Having made less of a splash than expected on the DS, Rockstar now seems intent on throwing Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars at every handheld gaming platform to see what sticks. Days after showing the first screens of the PSP version, the company has announced a version of the game headed to iPhone and iPod Touch this fall.

There are no screens or details about this release yet, but in the announcement, Sam Houser calls Chinatown Wars "a perfect match for the iPhone and iPod touch." Almost as perfect as it was for the DS, the system for which it was designed! We're very interested in how GTA will work without buttons. In a morbid kind of way.

PSP owners expecting a Liberty City Stories-styled facelift for the upcoming port of Chinatown Wars may be a little disappointed. One glance at the first batch of PSP screenshots shows that the game hasn't strayed far from its DS origins. Sure, the enhanced lighting effects and widescreen presentation are noticeable improvements, but it's clear that this GTA isn't pushing the hardware in any significant way.

Hopefully, the visuals won't stop PSP owners from checking out the game. It may be a port of a DS game, but it's a port of one of the best DS games ever. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will be available on UMD and PSN on October 20.

The Computer Entertainment Rating Organization (Japan's equivalent of the ESRB) reserves its most restrictive rating, Z, for games intended for ages 18 and up. There's a slightly less restrictive D rating for ages 17 and up, which gives Z-rated games a sort of stigma almost equivalent to the ESRB's AO rating -- Z-rated games require the buyer to provide proof of age, and often have little or no display presence in stores.

Which isn't exactly good news for the first CERO Z-rated DS game ... Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, whose North American sales suggest it doesn't need any more disadvantages. Like every other GTA, Chinatown Wars will carry the adults-only rating in Japan. Unlike every other GTA (except for IV on the PC), this one will be published by Cyberfront instead of Capcom when it comes out in the fall.

Rockstar has announced that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, the latest portable offering in the open-ended crime series, will be making the jump from DS to PSP. The game will be available in both UMD and digital download format when it's released in the US and Europe this autumn. Featuring enhanced widescreen graphics, improved lighting and animation and additional story missions, this version of Chinatown Wars "will take full advantage of the power of the PSP system."

No new assets have been released for the PSP version -- in fact, the official website still says it's exclusive to the DS -- but we should see more of this new addition to the ever-growing 2009 PSP lineup soon. See the PSP box art, after the break.

Rockstar Leeds and Rockstar North, together with LittleBigPlanet dev Media Molecule have netted an impressive eleven nominations for the 2009 Develop Industry Excellence Awards, the UK's annual prize patrol for all things excellent in the industry.

The Rockstar houses pocketed six of their own for work on GTA: Chinatown Wars and GTA IV: The Lost and the Damned, including nods for visual arts, technical innovation and audio. Rockstar Leeds is also up for the award for best handheld game studio, while both are in the running for being recognized as the best in-house team. Media Molecule is up for five awards as well, including best indie studio and best new IP. The Guildford studio is also up for the technical innovation award, where it's not only up against the Rockstar folks, but the teams behind Killzone 2, PlayStation Home, Football Manager Live and Fable II.

We wish all nominees the best of luck and remind them not to forget to thanks their moms should they take the stage and accept an award during the July 15 ceremony.

In its first month of release, GTA: Chinatown Wars managed to only sell 89,000 copies in the US, according to the NPD. Now that the figures for April have come in, Gamasutra reports the game has managed to sell another 74,000 copies. Mind you, we're no mathematicians (well, not all of us), but by our calculations, that means GTA: Chinatown Wars has managed to sell a total of 163,000 copies in the US so far, which is a lot lower than what most analysts predicted the game would sell in its first month.

We guess that South Park bump didn't do the game much good ...

Need any more proof that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is the best GTA game you're not playing? Rockstar has just announced the official opening of the Mr. Wong's Laundromat browser game, which allows players to earn in-game money and unlockable costumes that can be sent to the DS cartridge.

Once you've logged in to the Rockstar Social Club and linked your game to the service, you can start playing the web game, earning "up to $10,000 per day working for Mr Wong, a local Chinatown 'businessman' who's helped more than his fair share of cash trickle seamlessly and undetected through the streets of Liberty City over the years."

The game itself is pretty simple -- just catch money and jewelry as it tumbles out of washing machines, and dump it into Mr. Wong's van. It's an enjoyable diversion on its own, especially with included leaderboards. But as an online supplement to the DS game, it's even more interesting! Too bad about the "If it ain't Wong, it ain't white" slogan, which is not only potentially offensive, but a near-complete ripoff of something that was already taken off the market for being offensive.

CNBC is wondering if slow sales for The Lost and the Damned and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars are pointing to an overall slowdown for the series. The site points to analysts' estimates that only 1 million of those 13 million who bought GTA IV picked up the first DLC for the game, and to the crummy 89,000 units the DS title moved in March.

We're not sure we're on board with CNBC's theory just yet, though. The market for GTA IV's DLC was already split because of its 360 exclusivity and Chinatown Wars is a hardcore game on what's largely thought of as a casual system. What do you think?

Steve Papoutsis, producer of Dead Space Extraction, isn't concerned about the disappointing sales of recent Mature-rated games on Nintendo platforms.

Talking to VG247 about MadWorld on the Wii and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on the DS, Papoutsis said, "I think that's happening because of what people are looking to buy, I guess." In contrast, "I think with our game right now I think we're hitting on something that's really interesting and really fun, and we're hitting on the atmosphere and the visuals that people have started to associate with Dead Space." It's hard to believe that Grand Theft Auto just wasn't what people were "looking to buy," and an unexplainable not-really-rail-shooter is, but he could be on to something! Or he could have just decided not to tell VG247 how scared he really was.

Papoutsis also extolled the cooperative play found in Extraction: "I love the Wii, I love Nintendo. I love all the platforms, but I really want something that I can play co-operatively on the Wii with a friend that hits that sweet spot I think Dead Space: Extraction is in."

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.

As one of the few M-rated games on Nintendo's DS platform, and the only Grand Theft Auto game, you can bet that game industry insiders are keeping an eye on sales of the recently released Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Alas, NPD numbers won't be available until later this week, so we'll have to leave it to the analysts to predict the Chinatown Wars sales trajectory. But what are we to do if, as MTV reports, even the analysts can't agree?

According to MTV, Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter is predicting that the title sold a whopping 450,000 copies. Meanwhile, Jesse Divnich of EEDAR expects less than half of that figure, predicting around 200,000 copies. It's chaos out there, folks, and proof that people just don't know what to make of a high profile, M-rated game on Nintendo's cash machine. We suggest you get inside, lock the doors and board up the windows until we have official March NPD numbers to quell this storm.