GTA Chinatown Wars (2009): Top Reviews, Slow Launch

Chinatown Wars has the highest Metacritic score of Rockstar Leeds' handheld Grand Theft Autos, and in its first US month it sold about a fifth of what Wedbush Morgan's analyst had forecast. Both facts are well documented, and they rarely appear on the same page. This one puts them side by side, along with the drug-trading system that drew complaints before the game came out and praise from critics after.

At a glance

What is counted, and how

Dates come from Take-Two's Business Wire releases for the DS, PSP and iOS versions, and from Android Police for Android, since we found no Rockstar or Take-Two release for that one.

Sales. Take-Two never published a launch number. The US figures are NPD data as reported by Gamasutra (now Game Developer), so treat them as reported, not official. We found no primary lifetime total for any version, so none is printed here.

Reviews. We could not open IGN's or Eurogamer's own review pages for this check. Eurogamer's DS score comes from Metacritic's listing, and IGN appears only through Take-Two's own mention of its award.

Era. We file this game under the HD era, not the 3D era: it came out after GTA IV and revisits that game's Liberty City, not the GTA III-era city of Liberty City Stories.

Gaps between versions, in days:

• DS to PSP, Mar 17 to Oct 20, 2009: 14 (rest of March) + 30 + 31 + 30 + 31 + 31 + 30 (April to September) + 20 = 217.
• DS to iOS, to Jan 18, 2010: 217 + 11 (rest of October) + 30 + 31 + 18 = 307.
• DS to Android, to Dec 18, 2014: five years to Mar 17, 2014 (1,826 days, with 2012 a leap year) + 276 = 2,102.
• GTA IV (Apr 29, 2008, per Take-Two) to the DS release: 322.

The setup

Huang Lee arrives in Liberty City and is drawn into its gang and drug underworld while he looks for the man who murdered his father (Take-Two, Oct 2009). That is the premise, and we leave the rest of the story unspoiled.

What it changed

The camera moved back overhead, like GTA and GTA 2, but the world is cel-shaded 3D (Pocket Gamer). Pocket Gamer's pre-release guide said this Liberty City was larger than the play areas of the two PSP Stories games.

The DS touch screen does much of the work. It handles small in-world tasks such as car jacking, assembling a sniper rifle, safe cracking and paying a toll, and it tunes the radio, which plays licensed funk, soul and jazz in instrumental versions. The wanted system changed too: you cannot simply outrun the police, you have to take out a set number of pursuing cars (Pocket Gamer). Online, Wi-Fi linked the game to Rockstar Social Club leaderboards.

The trading system. Part of the game's economy is a side-game in which Huang trades drugs with dealers around the city, with police busts as the risk. We describe it only in those general terms. The objections came before release, and from outside the games press. In September 2008 Darren Gold of the UK charity Drugsline said "Anything using drug-dealing as entertainment is sending out the wrong message" (Nintendo Everything, which linked the complaint to The Sun). Dan Houser told Edge that Rockstar had "played with it a little in Vice City Stories" and that it "worked really well juxtaposed with the main story" (Shacknews). Critics did not hold it against the game: Eurogamer's verdict, quoted in Take-Two's PSP release, praised its "imaginative drug-dealing angle".

Every version

Reception

Critics rated it higher than either of the two Stories games. Eurogamer gave the DS version 100 on Metacritic's scale (10/10). By January 2010 Take-Two was noting Editor's Choice awards from GameSpot and IGN, and its PSP release called the game the highest-rated portable title of that console generation.

The DS original beats Liberty City Stories by 93 - 88 = 5 points and Vice City Stories by 93 - 86 = 7.

Legacy: forecast vs launch

The reviews say nothing about what happened at the till. This table does.

Arithmetic: 89,000 / 450,000 = 19.8% of Pachter's forecast. 89,000 / 200,000 = 44.5% of Divnich's lower forecast. Two months together, 89,000 + 74,000 = 163,000, matching Gamasutra's life-to-date figure, and still only 163,000 / 450,000 = 36.2% of what Pachter expected from March alone. Best Buy's cut was (35 - 20) / 35 = 42.9% off.

Gamasutra's analyst cautioned that the Best Buy discount may have lifted April's number. The ports followed anyway: PSP, then iOS, then Android more than five years after the DS original. See /library/gta-iv for the console game whose city this one revisited.

Trivia

• Take-Two's PSP release called it the highest-rated portable title of that console generation.
• The iOS version added Independence Radio, a station built from the player's own iTunes playlists (Take-Two).
• Before launch, EEDAR's Divnich noted that earlier GTA titles on the PSP had sold more than a million units lifetime (Game Developer).

Sources

• Take-Two (Business Wire), Chinatown Wars now available for Nintendo DS, Mar 17 2009
• Take-Two (Business Wire), Chinatown Wars now available for PSP, Oct 20 2009
• Take-Two (Business Wire), Chinatown Wars now available on the App Store, Jan 18 2010
• Android Police, Chinatown Wars expands into the Play Store, Dec 18 2014
• Take-Two, Board recommendation to reject EA offer, Mar 26 2008, slide 9 (SEC Exhibit 99.1)
• Pocket Gamer, GTA: Chinatown Wars - the lowdown on 2009's biggest DS game, Mar 5 2009
• Metacritic, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
• Metacritic, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories
• Engadget (Joystiq), Analysts can't agree on predicted Chinatown Wars sales, Apr 13 2009
• Game Developer, GTA: Chinatown Wars Sells 89,000 In First Month, Apr 17 2009
• Game Developer, NPD: GTA: Chinatown Wars Continues Steady Sales In 2nd Month, May 18 2009
• MCV, UK charts: Resident Evil 5 fends off GTA, Mar 23 2009
• Nintendo Everything, Chinatown Wars drug-dealing causing controversy already, Sep 25 2008
• Shacknews, Grand Theft Auto DS Sports Drug Dealing Mini Game, Sep 24 2008