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Piracy and GTA Chinatown Wars. The end of the big third-party IPs on DS?
GTA Nintendo DS ££££, apparently not.
Written by Steven Williamson, 02 April 2010
You'd put money on the conversion of the Grand Theft Auto series onto the small screen being a big money spinner, wouldn't you?
Apparently that hasn't been the case. Sales of GTA: Chinatown Wars, which was released last year on Nintendo DS and PSP were crippled by piracy claims Take-Two CEO, Ben Feder.
The combination of one of the biggest franchises in the world, plus the biggest selling hand-held incredibly hasn't been a winning formula and Feder cites "weak demand and piracy" as being contributing factors to its relatively poor sales performance.
"The handheld market is currently challenged by weak demand and by piracy. Piracy is a real and present danger for our industry and must be addressed, especially in the handheld market. The commercial performance of Chinatown Wars has certainly suffered at the hands of piracy," Feder told MCV.
There is some good news for Chinatown Wars though. Following its recent launch on iPod Touch and iPhone digital download sales are apparently doing extremely well.
But, it's quite a worry. If GTA doesn't sell well on DS then what hope has anyone else got? Could this be the last of the huge third-party IPs to hit the hand-held? We sincerely hope not, but when piracy is so high and Nintendo can only make very small dent in it with the investigations that it's currently carrying out, there doesn't seem much point in anyone trying at least not until the next iteration of the DS arrives on the market.
