Will an 18+ game ever succeed on a Nintendo platform?

I’ve been away for a couple of days so missed out on the big sales story from last week – namely that GTA: Chinatown Wars has seriously underperformed. The Rockstar developed DS title shifted 89,000 units in the US in March, way below the 200-450,000 analyst prediction. And that’s despite the game being rather good and certainly not just the retro remake of GTA 1 or 2 that many feared. So what happened? Is the Nintendo DS audience just not interested in "mature" gaming?

Possibly, but it isn’t quite that simple. The relatively casual DS audience is unlikely to get hyped for a game launch date like, say, a 360 owner would, meaning DS…