As it gears up to release Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on PSP come October 22, Rockstar has issued another set of screenshots from the portable open-world. Slated to arrive as both a physical retail UMD and a digital PlayStation Store download, the PSP edition of Chinatown Wars includes new missions and enhanced graphics over the Nintendo DS version that debuted earlier in the year. As for the DS' various touch-controlled mini-games, they've been tweaked with more traditional controls on PSP.

The well-known Grand Theft Auto franchise will be making the leap to iPhone and iPod Touch this fall with a port of Rockstar Leed's Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

Publisher and studio owner Take-Two Interactive made the announcement this morning. A firm release date and a price point for the downloadable game were not provided.

Released for the Nintendo DS earlier this year and coming to PSP on October 20, the top-down open-world title sees players stealing cars and dealing drugs, among other nefarious acts, all in the name of family.

Following the recent announcement that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will hit PSP October 20, developer Rockstar has now issued screenshots of the enhanced port.

Arriving as both a physical UMD and a PlayStation Store digital download, the PSP release of Chinatown Wars is said to pack numerous improvements over the Nintendo DS original, including new missions, upscaled graphics and better animation.

The PSP port of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will arrive on October 20, Rockstar announced on its Twitter feed today. While no screens or platform-specific details are available yet, Rockstar did note that the game will be available both as a UMD disc and as a digital download on the PlayStation Store.

Rockstar had previously promised an upscaled widescreen presentation and other graphical improvements for the port, along with new story missions.

Rockstar's Nintendo DS top-down open-world murder simulator Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is to be released on the PSP, publisher Take-Two announced today.

The PSP version promises to improve on the DS original with "upscaled widescreen graphics, enhanced lighting and animation; and including all-new story missions."

While the game was well-received critically, opening month sales of 89,000 units for the DS release of Chinatown Wars in March fell far short of many analysts' lofty predictions.

Coming this fall, GTA: Chinatown Wars is to be released both on UMD for owners of old-fashioned PSPs and on the PlayStation Network for the new download-only PSP Go.

While analysts had predicted that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars would see first month sales of anywhere from 200K to 450K units, sales-tracking group NPD has revealed that Rockstar's Nintendo DS exclusive sold far under those expectations.

From its release on March 17 to the end of NPD's tracking period on April 4, the mature-rated title sold a mere 89,000 units in the US, the firm confirmed with Joystiq. Publisher Take-Two's internal sales expectations for the game are unknown.

"The disappointing first month sales reinforce our view that achieving meaningful success on Nintendo platforms remains a very difficult proposition for third party publishers," Cowen Group analyst Doug Creutz told Gamasutra, noting his belief that the lower-than-expected sales were "not due to any misexecution on Take-Two's part."

Two industry analysts have filed vastly different predictions for the US sales of Rockstar's highly-rated Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, a game seen as an important indicator of whether Mature-rated titles can sell well on the Nintendo DS.

EEDAR analyst Jesse Divinich today pegged March sales of the game at only 200,000 units, saying that while it will be a profitable title for Rockstar, other publishers will not see the performance as encouraging.

"With the majority of publishers currently taking a risk-adverse stance, we expect this to slow the growth rate of future mature rated titles on the DS," said Divinich.

Meanwhile, analyst arch-nemesis Michael Pachter estimated that Chinatown Wars moved a far more healthy 450,000 units, over double that of Divinich's figure.

Official NPD sales numbers are expected to be released this Thursday.

With high marks coming in for Rockstar's first outing on the Nintendo DS, the just-released Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, analysts are expecting portable gamers to grab up several million copies of the title by the end of the year.

"If the title's subsequent reviews are consistent with the initial critical response, 'Chinatown Wars' would be the highest rated title on the DS to date," said Cowen Group analyst Doug Creutz.

Creutz expects that the game will see sales of 2 million units this year, according to Gamasutra.

"The highly-rated release supports our belief that Take-Two has, pound-for-pound, the highest-quality development talent in the industry," added Creutz.

Rockstar celebrated today's release of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (DS) with a new bit of gameplay footage, demonstrating a selection of the game's weapons.

It's been garnering rave reviews, and based off my time with the game, I have to say they're well deserved. I wasn't expecting much from the Nintendo DS iteration, but I'm really impressed by what Rockstar Leeds and North pulled off with the hardware. More importantly, it's just plain old fun--the atmosphere and feel of the series is spot-on.

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Rockstar has released a new batch of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (DS) footage, highlighting the game's "dealing and delivering."

Chinatown Wars hits the Nintendo DS on March 17.

[Video removed at request of Rockstar.]

With the March 17 release of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars fast approaching--that's next Tuesday--publisher Rockstar has released another snippet of footage from the open-world Nintendo DS game. This one focuses on hacking and rooftop sniping.

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This is more like it. Following the light-on-gameplay official trailer, here's some actual gameplay footage of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars--specifically, a look at the hotwiring minigame and a subsequent vehicular rampage.

Again, Chinatown Wars is due out March 17 on Nintendo DS.

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Rockstar has released the official trailer for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

The handheld title hits the Nintendo DS on March 17.

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Rockstar passed along a bunch of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown screenshots today. It's a mix of boring character portraits and exciting explosions, with handy captions explaining them all in story-time fashion.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown is set for a March 17 release on Nintendo DS.

The first Grand Theft Auto game for the Nintendo DS will hit North America on March 17, followed by a European release on March 20, 2009, publisher Rockstar has announced.

Developed by Rockstar Leeds and series creators Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars features a full 3D world along with a number of touch-screen mini-games, such as drug dealing, hotwiring cars, and tattoo inking.

"We are incredibly excited to share this enormous and uncompromising Grand Theft Auto experience with DS fans," said Rockstar founder Sam Houser.

Most of Liberty City, and not just Chinatown, will make the jump to Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (DS).

A feature in Nintendo Power magazine explains that four of Liberty City's five boroughs will fit in the handheld mayhem sim in the works at Rockstar Leeds. Alderney, the New Jersey-esque mafioso suburbia, is sitting out while Dukes, Bohan, Broker and Algonquin will be playable.

In addition to being land-rich, Chinatown Wars will be feature-filled as well. A cel-shaded Liberty City will be viewable through a 360-degree rotating camera, though the perspective will be primarily top-down. The world will be populated with pedestrians and vehicles, just like the game's console cousins.

Aside from being used for hotwiring and drug-dealing mini-games, the touch screen will serve as a PDA, which can be used for emails, showing the map, GPS navigation, controlling the radio, and statistics, which can be uploaded over the DS' Wi-Fi connection.

"This has the full weight and energy of a GTA production," said producer Dan Houser in an interview with the magazine.

All that scope and ambition has carried a price, as publisher Take-Two announced last week that Chinatown Wars has been delayed until between February 1 and April 30 of next year.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick let slip during a presentation in New York that both Grand Theft Auto 4's Xbox 360-exclusive downloadable content and Rockstar Leeds' Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (DS) are facing delays.

On the DLC front, MTV Multiplayer quoted Zelnick as saying, "It's close to being complete. That said, it may move into the second quarter." Take-Two's Q2 starts on February 1, which could place the DLC well beyond the fall 2008 target.

Zelnick's statement puts an even longer hypothetical delay on the DLC than that of producer Sam Houser, who expressed uncertainty this week whether the added content would reach the Xbox Live Marketplace this year. Currently, that DLC is expected in Take-Two's current quarter, which runs from November to January.

As for the Nintendo DS' first iteration in the hijacking-happy action series, Kotaku has Zelnick on the record with the following: "Chinatown Wars we've decided to move out of the first quarter in order to fill out a better launch and marketing window. The title will ship in the first half of our fiscal year."

The executive pegs Chinatown Wars for Take-Two's fiscal Q2, which means the drug-dealing handheld title is expected between February 1 and April 30, 2009.

The first digital screenshots of Rockstar Leed's Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars have debuted via Edge, showing off numerous aspects of the first GTA on Nintendo DS.

The screenshots include images of hotwiring a car with a screwdriver, tattoo inking and drug dealing, along with the series' standard predilection towards chaos. The game is slated to hit retailers by January 31, 2009.

In addition, Rockstar revealed several new mini-games, such as one that has players aiming a gas pump with the stylus to bottle and make a Molotov cocktail. Another will see players punching out the rear window of a car that's rapidly sinking in water.

"Nintendo wanted us to make GTA...they didn't want us to make a GTA for kids," Rockstar creative VP Dan Houser explained earlier this year. "[Grand Theft Auto] can't be softened to make it family-friendly--that's not the game we're making. We've never not done well by sticking to our guns."

The forthcoming Nintendo DS debut of Rockstar's oft-controversial Grand Theft Auto franchise will allow players to sell a variety of real-life drugs for in-game profit, according to a CVG report citing the latest issue of print magazine Edge.

When Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars arrives before February 2009, Nintendo DS owners will be able to traffic six types of drugs--heroin, cocaine, weed, ecstasy, acid and downers--to their in-game counterparts as supply and demands shapes the market.

"We wanted to have a drug-dealing mini game in lots of the GTA games," Rockstar creative VP Dan Houser explained. "We played with it a little in Vice City Stories, because it worked really well juxtaposed with the main story."

"Nintendo wanted us to make GTA...they didn't want us to make a GTA for kids," Houser added in a separate report on Edge Online. "[Grand Theft Auto] can't be softened to make it family-friendly--that's not the game we're making. We've never not done well by sticking to our guns."

Rockstar cofounder Dan Houser downplayed chances of a Wii entry in its megahit Grand Theft Auto series, saying it "didn't feel natural" compared to the opportunity to make a Nintendo DS game.

"It really was that the DS felt like it had a lot of interesting challenges that would be totally different from what we'd done in the past," Houser told Nintendo Power as relayed by Nintendo Everything. The stylus and the chance to use minigames in that way was really interesting and exciting to us, and we thought we could integrate seamlessly between those two modes."

"And it would be the chance to make something really good on a handheld with our handheld-focused team," he added. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, in development for the DS, is being handled by Rockstar Leeds, which previously produced the Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories games for the PSP.

Publisher Take-Two, for its part, continues to keep quiet on a Wii version of the hijack-happy action game, but CEO Ben Feder refused to shut that door entirely. "GTA: Chinatown Wars is an important step ...and we intend to continue to grow that relationship [with Nintendo]," he said.