If you were disappointed by Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars‘  low popularity and failure to “catch on”, well you are not alone. Nintendo’s executive vice president Cammie Dunaway shares your frustration.

Speaking with MTV Multiplayer (video above),  she reveals that while they expected word of mouth to propel the game into the echelons of higher fandom, truth is, they should have put in more advertising support, saying:

“Part of what’s needed is you have to continue to put marketing support behind these titles. The old dynamic of ‘throw it on television for a few weeks and then move on and forget it’ just doesn’t work…New consumers are coming in all the time who are interested, so you gotta keep coming up with ways to expose it…I think they should continue to put marketing support behind it.”

Easy enough to agree with Ms. Dunaway on that one. With the virtual onslaught of titles coming in on a near daily basis, the market is simply too crowded to not give your title a one up with heavy advertising campaigns. You can’t tell me that  Left 4 Dead 2, Assassin’s Creed II, and Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 weren’t massively helped by their excessive ad campaigns this past season. Maybe if Nintendo (and Sony, for that matter) gets “on it”, GTACW will find some new fans yet.

Joystiq