The NPD sales data for March just hit and it's bad news all around for fans of M-rated games on Nintendo hardware, but especially bad news for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Despite being the best-reviewed Nintendo DS game ever, it failed to crack the top ten in sales. In fact, the word on the street is that its sales were less than 90,000 copies. So the seven of you who voted "around 100,000" on the last poll, give yourself a pat on the back and then weep bitter tears of disappointment.
More bad news is that, despite the number 10 game this month selling around 200,000 copies, MadWorld failed to chart. That means that - while we don't know how many copies it did move - it was definitely less than 200,000. Probably not the kind of sales Sega and Platinum were hoping for, but then again, I was hoping for a game that was less overtly repetitive.
Wii fans - or at least the ones reading this site - really want M-rated, "traditional" games to take off on Wii and to a lesser extent on DS. This is pretty concrete evidence that it may not happen on Wii and it's definitely not happening on DS. With MadWorld I think it can be debated as to whether or not the game was really good enough to crack the M-rated glass ceiling for Wii, but the sales for Chinatown Wars are just depressng.
