GTA Chinatown Wars May Pave the Way for M-Rated Content On the DS

The recently released Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is one of only a handful of mature-rated titles for the Nintendo DS, so the industry is watching closely to see if the traditionally family-friendly market can support such titles. While sales have not been stellar, they haven't been terrible either, easily outperforming previous M-rated titles. If they continue to improve, it's possible we'll start seeing a more consistent effort for "serious" games on Nintendo's portable console. "In the end, Singer said Nintendo hopes that the sales story of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will be an encouraging one for game publishers. 'I think strategically, this is a very important game because it helps send the message that great M-rated content can come to the platform and will find a home.'"

Comments

Re:Yay! Japanese dating sims for the DS

[Fumus]

Now with touch controls.

Doesn't the reason lie in the demographics?

[meist3r]

I am always astonished how much fuss is made around how the DS or the Wii are deemed "family friendly" consoles. For the DS it boils down to a certain market segment that used to be exclusively construed from kids and teenagers. Now that middle aged housewives have got a literal grip on the gaming market of course the entire perception shifts. Over a decade ago when I was much younger and got my first gameboy that was a "toy" nothing more, nothing less. Nowadays videogames have turned into an entirely different category and the very same device can act as a simple "toy" for some and as more mature entertainment vehicle for others. Since Nintendo was always one of the companies that made their money by specifically appealing to the "toy" crowd (they still do) they became associated with that low age low maintainance demographics. What people won't realize is that just as gamers have grown up so did games. M titles will be on all platforms and are merely a logical step. That it took Nintendo so long to jump it's own over-protective shadow is a money laden unsolved mystery to me. Maybe know that they realize how little the Wii can actually compete with the HD platforms they open their portfolio to new markets a little more.

Re:Doesn't the reason lie in the demographics?

[KDR_11k]

There's always a large supply of young and mature (I mean the kind who's too mature to think blood explosions are funny) people who could become gamers with the right game. In fact Nintendo is now winning precisely by expanding their appeal to these people with more game variety. The people who actually grew up with games and now demand M ratings are a minority, some grew up with them but lapsed, others outgrew the age where violence seems like a good part of a game and many didn't have games in their own childhood and still need to be introduced to gaming for the first time. [url=http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2008/08/episode-eleven-can-it-happen-to-us.html]The comic book industry tried to grow up along with its fans too[/url].

That the Wii can't compete with the HD consoles visually is not an accident or a result of weakness, had they wanted to they could have made a machine that'll easily go head to head with them (they did last gen without breaking a sweat/loss per console and they had more than enough spare cash to afford R&D). They didn't. They analyzed the market and determined that the people who actually demand HD graphics before they're willing to purchase a game are few, many people, even the regular gamers, don't put so much emphasis on graphics that a good game with last gen graphics can't sell to them. Additionally last gen graphics are significantly cheaper (AAA games are 2.5 times as expensive on the HD consoles as on last gen systems) and it's a lot more profitable to innovate (much easier when you've got to invest less per attempt and can actually accept a few failures if you have to) and find new ways to appeal to people who haven't been appealed to before. Of course that didn't start with the Wii, the first experiment was the DS which is now the best system of the current generation hands down (and when it was launched people predicted its doom at the hands of the PSP because the PSP has better graphics). After the test run succeeded they went full scale on it with the Wii and it succeeded, as expected.

Re:Yes

[Sparckus]

More decent tiles you mean, there's been plenty of shite getting churned out in the past year or two.

On Ars: GTA:CTs poor sales could mean the opposite

[jaymz2k4]

I read this on Ars yesteday and essentially they're saying the poor sales figures could hurt future developer decisions to focus on "mature" content.

It's possible that gamers simply weren't interested in what they saw as a hacked-down version of the game, or that the demographic of the Nintendo DS really is as young as the haters would have you believe, no matter how many anecdotes you hear about adults buying the system.

DS Chinatown Wars flops badly

Re:On Ars: GTA:CTs poor sales could mean the oppos

[KDR_11k]

Nintendo responded by telling people to stop looking only at the first week's sales because there's more than one week or month for the game to sell in and on platforms like the DS and Wii they actually do instead of hitting near-zero sales after two months and a pricedrop after three more. Their example is CoD4 for the DS which sold 36k in the first month and 500k lifetime-to-date.

M-rated != mature

[StreetStealth]

I still don't understand the strange implied correlation between rating and maturity, as if content ratings are somehow a measure of a game's (or movie's, or that matter) sophistication.

As a ceiling, yes: It makes sense that more mature content should have that space in which to work, so that if the creators feel it needs violence or sexuality, they're free to add it, but this assumption that if it's not M-rated it's not appropriate for adults just seems an oddly limited view of the medium.