GTA Chinatown Wars:Why It Failed On The DS
Take Two in line with any unfaithful third party developer has decided to
port one of the biggest and arguably best DS games onto its competitors platform the PlayStation Portable. Although this news comes as a major update to most PSP owners and the community at large, during the announcement of Chinatown wars for the DS, Jack Tretton was pretty sure that there would be another GTA headed for their machine.
Although the triumphant calls echo across millions of PSP users, two points come onto the fore. The stability of Nintendo's gaming machine(s) in handling an audience which
according to Tretton is not above 12 and the transitional experience that made the DS experience different from the previous versions of GTA that had already been released on the PSP.
An audience that understands a platform is extremely important while crafting a game, when Rockstar initially conceived Chinatown wars they were confident in tapping an audience whose brain had started to rot going through Legend Of Zelda
hantom Hourglass and Ninja Gaiden for the nth time, the developers also looked upon the DS's strength which lay in the ability of not pushing polygons and power but emulating the notion of touch through the stylus that explains why numerous users love ameliorating their cranium with “Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!” The primary reason for failure of the title onto the DS was levels acceptance of the game in relation to its appearance.
There is an enormous army of GTA fans lined up who wait patiently for the next GTA release, however out of these fans only a minority fall in the line who look at videogames not emulating a form of entertainment but acting out as a medium to construct and develop an alternative form of language and communication. The larger segment of the population who did look at GTA:Chinatown wars perceived it as an object that went back to old top down perspective of the original games, which in their minds was inferior to the full three dimensional world that was offered to them on the PSP. This axed the possibility of the game from being anywhere close to a potential system seller which was apparent with the GTA's on the PSP.
The transition to the PSP is merely a marketing move by the company to recuperate on the horrible sales figures for the game which falls out of line when compared to the user base the DS commands. Although Rockstar promises numerous additions planned out for the port, including an enhanced engine and perhaps in game music and dialogues, the prospect of the game becoming a huge seller on the PSP is infact an ancient marketing ploy of association and relation which translates into identifying a popular franchise with a particular console. A recent example of such a technique was seen with Halo:Wars, where the larger segment of the population bought/rented the game were under the impression that this was the next Halo(read FPS) to hit the market.
Though Chinatown wars will have to remove all the sections that utilized the stylus and replace it with a few timed button presses and induce upon a sense of monotony in the game. The greater audience of the game might just fall with the promise of updated graphics which may translate 3d redition of a GTA world smilar to Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories for the PSP.
The audience that Nintendo deals with is another important piece of the puzzle, the company does boast of millions of sales for their own franchises which have stood the test of generations, but the machine fails to look upon satisfying the needs of a minority who stood by Nintendo through its period of regret by not releasing a consistent flow of titles that will keep the attach rate for such individuals sufficiently high enough for franchises like GTA/Ninja Gaiden work. Releasing a single AAA game in a span of one year seems to provide an insufficient material for such players to shift to other gaming machines which have a broader range of game lineup to boot.
Chinatown wars could have been made a successful project had Nintendo taken the initiative to promote the game on their console, instead it still lies hedging on the notion of family based gaming. Developers are merely pushing their luck on their consoles looking at their massive install base, but forget their actual audience falls under a minority in the vast ocean.