One of Nintendo and Rockstar's greater hopes for the year of 2009 was the release of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS. And though it was received well critically, the game has so far failed to meet expectations, only moving 89,000 copies before the March NPD results were in.

Everyone's Favorite Analyst, Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan, believes that across the US and Europe, the overlap between the kind of gamer who wants GTA-- 18-30 year old males-- and what seems to be Nintendo's current target audience is slim, with the former comprising less than ten percent of the userbase.

"There may be a lot of 'adults' who own DS hardware, but look at the ads: America Ferrera, Liv Tyler, Beyonce, and Carrie Underwood are all targeted at teen girls or women," Pachter said to Gamasutra, adding "It's pretty clear to me that the 'older' DS demographic is largely female, and that they play Brain Training, Nintendogs, and Rhythm Heaven, not GTA: Chinatown Wars."

While some analysts believe that perhaps there is "market desensitization to the genre," Pachter disagrees. "I do not believe the market is tired of the GTA franchise," Pachter says. "The other dimension is that the 10 percent of DS owners [in the target audience] -- still 10 million -- probably own a console as well, and if they're inclined to buy GTA, they would probably do it on a console first. Few people buy the same game on the DS and on a console."

Though the sales have been slow so far, Take-Two will not be deterred: "Through ongoing advertising and promotional campaigns, we'll continue to support the title and raise awareness for the blockbuster GTA franchise on DS," said one rep.

Even so, Pachter feels that the fault does not lie with Take-Two, but simply that the audience for the game simply does not exist on the DS. "We can't say that Take-Two made a bad game or marketed it poorly," he says. "Instead, they created an M-rated game for a largely E and T audience, and those DS owners who are legally allowed to buy an M-rated game are not particularly interested."

Take-Two stands firm, however, stating that "The bottom line is that we're very confident in Chinatown Wars' potential for long-term success. We think it's going to have a long life in the market, as we've seen with other GTA titles."

Pachter simply counters that "There's no point making games for an audience that is not there."

Of course, others still disagree:

"He forgets so quickly that the DS and Wii stood no chance against the might of the PSPs and the Xbox 360s and PS3s of the world. That they were doomed to failure and made no sense until they made games for an audience that wasn't there."

As for Nintendo, Gamasutra received no reply from the company for the story as they went to press. However, in a report by Kotaku last week, Denise Kaigler, Nintendo of America's Vice President of Corporate Affairs did offer the following:

"Remember that many games for Nintendo DS have a nontraditional sales pattern. The trend is toward 'evergreen' games that sell well over an extended period of time instead of in a one-month spike. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for Nintendo DS is a good example. In its first month (November 2007), it sold only 36,000. To date, it has sold through nearly 500,000. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a great game that has received tremendous reviews. We expect that with continued backing, it will follow the same long-tail/evergreen sales route that other top sellers have taken."

This seems to be the thinking of Take-Two as well, as their Vice President of Corporate Communications, Alan Lewis, told them "Chinatown Wars received critical acclaim and is the highest rated DS title of all time," adding that "In terms of performance, we think it is performing in line with other triple-A games on the platform."

Going back to the fact that the sales numbers for Chinatown Wars only reflects 19 days on sale, Lewis says "We are very confident in Chinatown Wars long-term potential for success. We think it will have a long life in the market."

EEDAR Analyst Jesse Divnich seems to agree: "When you release a big DS game like this, it's for the long term. It's not like an in and out thing, like you would see for the console. With the DS, games have a lot longer legs than any other."

Still, Pachter feels it may be awhile before we see any other such attempts on the DS: "It's shocking that sales were 89,000 because it is a really well known franchise, a really high rated game," he said. "There is no way you can say it didn't do well because people didn't know about it or it's bad."

"This is really the first hardcore, mature game for the DS," he adds. "I think there certainly won't be another for the next two or three years. It will take a bold publisher to put something else like this out there."

Of course, who is bolder than Take-Two?

"We have and we will continue to support the platform," Take-Two's Lewis said. "We think the mature segment of the DS market is growing."