It was bold for Take-Two to bring their Gran Theft Auto franchise to the DS. It is their thinking that the casual gamers would readily accept Chinatown Wars while the hardcore gamers will migrate to the DS because of it. Obviously that’s not what happened.

An expert pointed out that no even all the hype Chinatown Wars has gotten, it still underperformed with 89,000 units sold since it was launched last month. It’s not the publisher’s fault at all. I have the game I really loved it. It’s just that the demographics are really against them. Majority of DS users are either too young for the mature rating or they’re against games like GTA.

Madworld, another mature game made for a Nintendo console, also performed poorly during its first month. It sold 66,000 units in the U.S. But this is already a given for mature games for Nintendo consoles. They might not be lighting up the game charts but there is still a market for M games on the Wii and DS. Hopefully the publishers and game developers are not discouraged by this.