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Mature Market Unprofitable on DS?

Tom Ivan's picture

By Tom Ivan

April 14, 2009

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"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”

EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich has questioned the profit potential of M-rated titles on DS, saying the performance of Take-Two’s GTA: Chinatown Wars will be an “important benchmark for the industry”.
 
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.

vandriff's picture
On April 14th vandriff said:

i think the fact that most (or lets just say, quite a lot) of the +18 consumers for the DS use some sort of flash cart to pirate the games would lead to this game not selling as highly too.

even with the copyright protection that companies try to include with the newer games it seems that the people who would be actually old enough to buy this game are the same people who more consistently use these types of carts.

im sure that this greatly effects the numbers on mature (or even "core") games that release on the system considering that its parents, not the kids, who fork out money for DS titles and usually know very little about flash cartridges or how they work.

i bet if everyone who pirated this game and actually enjoyed it went out and bought a copy we would be seeing very different numbers on the table.

Huw Jass's picture
On April 14th Huw Jass said:

Another news item based on what an analyst thinks. Can't EDGE avoid these witless banterings and instead report on actual facts and figures?

ChesterCopperpot's picture
On April 14th ChesterCopperpot said:

Surely by now this Divnich dipstick should have realised that DS titles don't do the usual fly-off-the-shelves thang and instead sell steadily and consistently. Just because it's a GTA game that hasn't entered at #1 he shouldn't jump to the conclusion that mature-rated games are a risk on DS. Things like Animal Crossing, New Super Mario Bros, Zelda: PH and Brain Training may not be aimed squarely at an adult audience but what made them sell in vast quantities wasn't marketing or review scores (not entirely) but word-of-mouth, especially with regards to Brain Training. GTA: CW will be no different. The DS has the install base, GTA the brand recognition.

Let's wait and see in six months...

Kenology's picture
On April 14th Kenology said:

I agree. This crazy analyst really underestimates the legs of DS titles. Just because Chinatown Wars won't be the #1 selling game in March doesn't make it a failure or a loss for Rockstar. This dude doesn't really know what he's talking about. Why else would he think 'high review scores on metacritic' = 'retail success' with all the evidence to the contrary.