GTA: Chinatown Wars Could Sell 2 Million Copies

Can the Grand Theft Auto franchise do anything wrong? It seems not. Grand Theft Auto IV was one of the best sold videogames of 2008, also taking home quite a few awards at the ceremonies held at the end of the year.

Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned, the first downloadable content pack for the game, which was launched in February, has become an Xbox Live hit and is set to sell about 2 million digital copies during 2009, paving the way for another piece of DLC that is set to arrive in the coming months.

Take Two and Rockstar have just released Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, the first game in the series designed to take advantage of the unique features of the Nintendo DS.

Analyst Doug Creutz, who works for the Cowen Group, believes that the videogame can also sell about 2 million copies in the first year in which it is one the market, mainly because of the popularity of the GTA name and because of the widespread availability of the Nintendo DS handheld. Only in the United States, there are 27 million people using such a gaming device and, even though the console seems to be aimed at younger gamers and at casual players, there's significant potential for Chinatown Wars.

The main problem the game could encounter is controversy over the themes that it tackles, mainly the violence and the drug references that make an appearance. At the moment, GTA: Chinatown Wars has a Metacritic score of over 90 and is likely to remain one of the best rated Nintendo DS games.

Creutz also believes that the release of Chinatown Wars and of the next DLC episode for GTA IV will make Take Two more profitable than thought in 2009, even if it does not release another full fledged installment in the GTA franchise.