Comments on: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Crashes Onto PSP

By: mot

mot — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:04:31 +0000

actually i got it for 19.99 from best buy.com they had that price for a while dont know if still do it's an absolutly amazing ds game over 30 hours invested!

By: mot

mot — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:04:31 +0000

actually i got it for 19.99 from best buy.com they had that price for a while dont know if still do it's an absolutly amazing ds game over 30 hours invested!

By: SteveJ

SteveJ — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:35:46 +0000

One of the reasons I didn't buy it for the DS is that it was expensive (for a DS game) at $35. If I knew I was going to like it I might be willing to pay that much, but I've never played a GTA game before.

I plan to get it eventually, but only once I can find it for a reasonable price. I can't imagine that it's selling all *that* badly because the price hasn't come down significantly. It's $33.99 at amazon. If this game had really tanked, wouldn't it be $19.99 by now? Maybe the game just had a slow start but is having sustained sales like Boom Blox did for the Wii?

By: jj984jj

jj984jj — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:42:57 +0000

Actually it's probably at 250k by now. Like jarrod said it did 160k in the US alone in its first 2 months and 34k in the UK during April. That's almost 200k using public numbers from NPD and GfK Chart-Track via Famitsu. That leaves the rest of Europe and smaller countries as well as March/May for the UK and May for the US unaccounted for, it's too bad that they've announced the PSP port only 3 months after the DS version came out, I thought it would've at least waited a year before announcing a port giving the game at least 1 holiday season to stand on its own.

By: asa

asa — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:03:43 +0000

they might as well port it i have it for ds its a goood game , but for some reaon ds owners didnt pay the game , they nned to sell 1 million copies to make a profit and there at like 120,000 right now.

By: Pichi

Pichi — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:56:32 +0000

Indeed, they just want more money and this is why the move has been made. I shouldn't be surprised, really, but it still shocks me. Haven't bought it yet, now I'll have to see which one I'll go for.

By: daizyujin

daizyujin — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:22:26 +0000

Brian Crecente tried to make this point on Kotaku and I will tell you the same thing I said to him. There is little to no evidence to support this claim. Even if the game has a high piracy rate, that still gives no evidence that said pirates would have bought the game anyways. Until you can completely separate these two groups, any usage of piracy as reason for the under performance of Chinatown wars is just a scapegoat based on extrapolation.

The industry loves this excuse though since it lends credit to their crusade against piracy, even though that crusade is backed up with numbers that are highly dubious, completely padded and use numbers from countries such as China, Brazil, and India where piracy is a concern not because of people's unwillingness to support legit products but because they can't afford legit products.

Do a little research before you jump on the bandwagon. After all the same people that like to make these claims about the dangers of piracy are the same ones that still cling to the fact that piracy was what killed the Dreamcast, even though Peter Moore has said completely the opposite.

Piracy is a problem for developers and publishers for sure, but much like in the music and movie/video industry, it is one that exagerated beyond belief.

By: Strike_Man

Strike_Man — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:21:39 +0000

PSP owners buying a game instead of pirating it?

Heh, I wouldn't place a whole lot of chips on that…

By: kylehyde

kylehyde — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:41:18 +0000

The true problem with Chinatown wars was the R4, many people loved the game, but unfortunately, most of this people pirated the game. I hope the psp owners have a better attitude than those R4 owners and buy the game and for those who pirated the game I say:
Are you happy now? maybe we will never see a Rockstar game on the DS all because your stupidity

By: lostinblue

lostinblue — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:33:14 +0000

This is no different than when Rockstar decided to port PSP GTA's to the PS2, they say window to make extra money with it and they did. It's not that PSP was selling badly, and it's not that DS is selling badly, but they're sure to turn a bigger profit out of it.

Don't read too much into it guys.

By: jarrodand

jarrodand — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:12:48 +0000

I think it's sales issues were more due to the economy slowing down sales across the board and core gamers just generally pirating the hell out of DS. Then again, these are issues which hit PSP just as hard, if not harder.

GTA as a franchise seems to be declining some though as well, GTAIV had a great debut but it's legs haven't compared to the previous installments at all and it's probably not going to sell near as much as San Andreas in the end.

By: Ishaan

Ishaan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:45:24 +0000

Let's also keep in mind that one of the reasons Chinatown Wars didn't sell all that well on DS (at least upfront) could be that people didn't want to go back to the classic top-down GTA style. If this is a straight-up port, those exact same concerns are going to be directed at the PSP version, too.

That said, any chances Chinatown Wars had of having legs have probably gone *poof* with this announcement.

By: jarrodand

jarrodand — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:35:22 +0000

No, they really didn't and the idea they did is largely revisionist history. Both underperformed upfront, VCS barely sold better than CTW has, and both got similarly quick PS2 ports. They eventually sold millions, but that was years down the line after they'd been slashed to $20. That scenario is probably what's in store for CTW too.

CTW PSP is almost assured to sell less than it did on DS imo. The only real hope it really has is via download sales, and I think that depends how much Go stimulates the platform considering 85% of PSPs out there now are cracked/crackable.

By: daizyujin

daizyujin — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:24:19 +0000

Don't be too quick to judge, the other two GTA games did well on the PSP. If they do enough work to it to bring it up to snuff for the PSP then it might do decent. Of course not sure they are wanting to put too much money into it.

By: daizyujin

daizyujin — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:22:33 +0000

Like Ishaan said, this is a whole different ball game. The PSP and PS2 are pretty similar in power level and most importantly you are going from a system that has a smaller install base to one that has a larger one with a PSP to PS2 port. It looks more like they are just trying to milk it.

Here you are going from a system with a larger base, the DS, to one with a smaller one, the PSP. That looks more like desperation to me personally.

Besides, controls are not a large an issue in PSP to PS2. The PS2 can do everything the PSP can and more. This however is going to take some clever changes since the PSP has no touch screen.