Does mature content have a future on DS?

The failure of Rockstar’s critically-adored Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars to trouble the higher end of the charts has lead one analyst to predict that there are unlikely to be many more 18-rated games released for Nintendo DS.

Though the US March sales figures are not known, analysts predict that Rockstar’s game could have sold anything between 200,000 and 400,000 throughout the month, this is way below what a new GTA title on home formats would be expected to achieve.

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’s Jesse Divnich told Gamasutra.

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.

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.”