Earlier in the week I wrote about EEDAR's low estimates for the sales of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for Nintendo DS. The company predicted that the game would sell 200,000 units in March. According to NPD Group, it's worse than that -- a tremendously disappointing 89,000.

Although March is a traditionally slow period for video-game sales, Chinatown Wars had a lot going for it. The game was critically acclaimed and lacked M-rated competition on the DS platform. If NPD's figures are accurate then neither factor mattered. The end result, unfortunately, will be that third-party publishers are likely to avoid publishing mature content for the DS.

Unfortunately, that's not all the bad news when it comes to M-rated, third-party games for Nintendo platforms. Another high-profile title for Wii completely flopped in March and I'll have more on that later today.

Do you think the failure of Chinatown Wars is short term? Do you think sales will pick up over 2009? Or do you think it will just get worse, spelling doom for M-rated games on the DS?

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