GTA Chinatown Wars May Pave the Way for M-Rated Content On the DS 54
The recently released Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is one of only a handful of mature-rated titles for the Nintendo DS, so the industry is watching closely to see if the traditionally family-friendly market can support such titles. While sales have not been stellar, they haven't been terrible either, easily outperforming previous M-rated titles. If they continue to improve, it's possible we'll start seeing a more consistent effort for "serious" games on Nintendo's portable console. "In the end, Singer said Nintendo hopes that the sales story of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will be an encouraging one for game publishers. 'I think strategically, this is a very important game because it helps send the message that great M-rated content can come to the platform and will find a home.'"
Doesn't the reason lie in the demographics? (Score:5, Interesting)
On Ars: GTA:CTs poor sales could mean the opposite (Score:4, Interesting)
DS Chinatown Wars flops badly [arstechnica.com]
Re:Doesn't the reason lie in the demographics? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's always a large supply of young and mature (I mean the kind who's too mature to think blood explosions are funny) people who could become gamers with the right game. In fact Nintendo is now winning precisely by expanding their appeal to these people with more game variety. The people who actually grew up with games and now demand M ratings are a minority, some grew up with them but lapsed, others outgrew the age where violence seems like a good part of a game and many didn't have games in their own childhood and still need to be introduced to gaming for the first time. [url=http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2008/08/episode-eleven-can-it-happen-to-us.html]The comic book industry tried to grow up along with its fans too[/url].
That the Wii can't compete with the HD consoles visually is not an accident or a result of weakness, had they wanted to they could have made a machine that'll easily go head to head with them (they did last gen without breaking a sweat/loss per console and they had more than enough spare cash to afford R&D). They didn't. They analyzed the market and determined that the people who actually demand HD graphics before they're willing to purchase a game are few, many people, even the regular gamers, don't put so much emphasis on graphics that a good game with last gen graphics can't sell to them. Additionally last gen graphics are significantly cheaper (AAA games are 2.5 times as expensive on the HD consoles as on last gen systems) and it's a lot more profitable to innovate (much easier when you've got to invest less per attempt and can actually accept a few failures if you have to) and find new ways to appeal to people who haven't been appealed to before. Of course that didn't start with the Wii, the first experiment was the DS which is now the best system of the current generation hands down (and when it was launched people predicted its doom at the hands of the PSP because the PSP has better graphics). After the test run succeeded they went full scale on it with the Wii and it succeeded, as expected.
Re:On Ars: GTA:CTs poor sales could mean the oppos (Score:3, Interesting)
Nintendo responded by telling people to stop looking only at the first week's sales [nintendolife.com] because there's more than one week or month for the game to sell in and on platforms like the DS and Wii they actually do instead of hitting near-zero sales after two months and a pricedrop after three more. Their example is CoD4 for the DS which sold 36k in the first month and 500k lifetime-to-date.
M-rated != mature (Score:4, Interesting)
I still don't understand the strange implied correlation between rating and maturity, as if content ratings are somehow a measure of a game's (or movie's, or that matter) sophistication.
As a ceiling, yes: It makes sense that more mature content should have that space in which to work, so that if the creators feel it needs violence or sexuality, they're free to add it, but this assumption that if it's not M-rated it's not appropriate for adults just seems an oddly limited view of the medium.
Re:Doesn't the reason lie in the demographics? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's always a large supply of young and mature (I mean the kind who's too mature to think blood explosions are funny) people who could become gamers with the right game. In fact Nintendo is now winning precisely by expanding their appeal to these people with more game variety. The people who actually grew up with games and now demand M ratings are a minority, some grew up with them but lapsed, others outgrew the age where violence seems like a good part of a game and many didn't have games in their own childhood and still need to be introduced to gaming for the first time.
Wanting mature content doesn't exactly boil down to mindless violence in games, much as wanting to watch mature movies doesn't boil down to pointless violence. I don't need gratuitous violence, I just don't want to be limited in what games I play.
It would be one thing if nintendo were just shying away from blood and sex, but the games that dominate the wii and DS are more than that, they're focused at children, they're very simple. Animal crossing, wii fit, mario kart. Super mario galaxy was much easier than super mario sunshine. About the only noteworthy nintendo title that couldn't accurately be called a kids game was metroid. It didn't have blood, it did have shooting and killing aliens, not kids themes.
I'm fine with games without blood explosions or nudity, but I don't want to feel like I'm playing a child's game because that gets old eventually, plus it feels a bit silly, like I'm using safety scissors. And the non kids-game releases have been lacking.
By now it's sort of entrenched, with parents groups getting bent out of shape at manhunt 2, because the wii is supposed to be for children in their mind. That might be why american 3rd party developers are avoiding the wii.