Divnich expects Chinatown Wars, which is the first UK DS title to receive an 18 rating, to be March’s tenth bestselling game in the States with around 200,000 copies sold.
"It appears the industry may have been over-zealous with initial expectations on how GTA: Chinatown Wars would perform based upon the news it had received one of the highest quality scores for a Nintendo DS title,” he said in a research note. "It is important to note that there have been many other titles that achieved a quality score above 90 on the Nintendo DS and have failed to sell > 300k units within 3-months in North America (irrespective of ESRB rating).
“The results from Chinatown are an important benchmark for the industry as it will be the best performing mature-rated title on the Nintendo DS to date coupled with one of the strongest mature-rated game brands,” he added.
In the UK the title made its chart debut in sixth place, with opening week sales around half of the launch week total achieved by the previous handheld GTA title, Vice City Stories on PSP. Three weeks on, the game sits at 19 in the latest software rankings.
Divnich predicted that the game, which has a Metascore of 94, will generate a profit for Take-Two. However, he also said that high review scores for DS titles don’t necessarily translate into big sales, and he expects other publishers to be cautious about releasing M-rated games on Nintendo’s handheld.
“EEDAR believes the results of GTA: Chinatown Wars confirms that attempting to release a major AAA title on the Nintendo DS, targeted at a mature demographic, carries significantly elevated risk. With the majority of publishers currently taking a risk-adverse stance, we expect this to slow the growth rate of future mature rated titles on the DS.”
Another analyst, Doug Creutz with Cowen and Company, said previously that he expected the game to sell two million copies in the States during its first year, aided by its strong critical rating.
It will become clear how well Chinatown Wars has performed when the NPD Group releases its monthly US sales data, which is expected to be this Thursday.