“Natural” is the last adjective I’d use to describe the concept of bringing Grand Theft Auto to the Nintendo DS. But apparently, it is more natural than it would have been on Wii.

Or so says developer Rockstar Games.

In an interview with Nintendo Power, Rockstar’s Dan Houser outlined his company’s reasoning for bringing the controversial franchise to the DS and not the Wii.

Nintendo Power: It seems like a more natural progression for the series to move to Wii rather than the DS. Is there any reason why you didn’t take it there first?

Houser: It didn’t feel natural to us, I guess. 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. 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. That was really why we went that way. We haven’t really done any concrete, major thinking about the Wii, one way or another. They’re sort of separate issues. — Nintendo Everything

So let me get this straight. Using an analog stick and IR control for a Grand Theft Auto game wouldn’t be natural, but using a directional pad, touch screen and minigames is?

I’m skeptical, to say the least. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is set for a Q1 2009 release. Expect the hooker-beating franchise to come to Wii sometime in 2000-never.

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