Rockstar's release of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was warmly received by critics (including our own), who hailed the latest GTA title as perhaps on the finest DS games yet. That it was one of the few M-rated DS titles also helped Chinatown Wars earn some street cred on a platform perhaps better known to the lay consumer for its E-rated casual games. Unfortunately, EEDAR (Electronic Entertainment Design and Research) analyst Jesse Divnich has a sinking feeling that none of this will help translate into strong sales for Chinatown Wars.

The interactive entertainment research firm is currently estimating sales of around 200,000 units for the latest GTA title. Despite the sheer size of the DS market, it seems M-rated titles may not share in the same sales potential awarded to general audience titles. This points toward risk of releasing future M-rated games on the platform, given the tastes and purchasing habits of the DS market demographics. According to Divnich:

EEDAR believes the results of GTA: Chinatown Wars confirms that attempting to release a major AAA title on the Nintendo DS, targeted at a mature demographic, carries significantly elevated risk. 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. This is not true, however, of the entire handheld market: mature rated titles have performed very well on the Sony PSP. Previous GTA titles on the PSP have sold in excess 1 million units lifetime. The performance on the DS highlights clearly the demographic differences between the two platforms in the handheld market.

The Chinatown Wars sales estimate could be made all the more telling when pitted against the expected performance of family-friendly Pokemon Platinum, also released last month. To be fair, the pedigree of the Pokemon name has ensured sales success for previous entries on handheld Nintendo platforms, and Platinum will likely be no different; EEDAR predicts sales in excess of 870,000 units for the latest Pokemon game during its first month alone.

Divnich believes Take-Two still ultimately benefited from Chinatown Wars' release on the DS, assuming the publisher wasn't expecting the title to push over half a million units in a month or something. We'll see how things really went down in Liberty City on the DS when NPD releases their officialy monthly industry sales report later this week!