Working Designs closes shop, future uncertain for Ireland.

[schild]

Shamelessly stolen from Gamespot:

Almost two decades after it formed as an accounting software company, niche publisher Working Designs is gone, according to company president Victor Ireland.

"There's no easy way to say it, so I just will. Working Designs is gone. All the staff has been laid off and the office is closed and has been for some time," Ireland wrote in a message board post on the company's official forums.

The news comes just over a year after the company's last release, Growlanser Generations, hit shelves.

"We just spent too much time fighting the good fight to even get it out," Ireland wrote of Growlanser, "and other games approved."

One such game the company apparently failed to get approved was the PlayStation 2 action adventure game Goemon.

"Though almost finished and substantially improved from the Japanese release, Goemon is dead for the US, and that was really the final straw," Ireland wrote. "If I can't guarantee that the games I personally choose for us to release in the US can actually get approved and come out, there's no business to be done."

Ireland, who has butted heads with publishers before, seemed to take a parting shot at Sony in his posting.

"Sony has made it clear that they do not want the details of their dealings with any publisher made public," Ireland wrote. "Suffice to say that you would buy what we wanted to sell if we could sell it."

He also noted that Growlanser Generations and Goemon might still see a release in Europe, though details like how, when, and under what publisher were left up in the air.

Working Designs may be done, but Ireland isn't ready to leave the gaming industry entirely. He plans to work with other Working Designs staffers on projects for different publishers for the time being, and he said he would like to help bring Japanese Xbox 360 role-playing games to the US.

Ireland signed off by thanking Working Designs' fan base and warning of potentially dark days ahead.

"It's a tough road ahead for games that aren't of the least-common-denominator variety," Ireland wrote. "The choices you make with your hardware dollars are more important than ever for the generation that is upon us."

This is depressing. They imported a lot of games I could never have played. More than that, I don't think that many RPGs will come out on the 360 and Ireland obviously doesn't want to work on the PS3. Damnit.

[Fabricated]

I like Working Designs, but I wonder what kind of crack they have to be smoking to suggest the 360 is going to get any decent Japanese RPGs from companies that Microsoft doesn't have a stake in.

So solly, but the Japanese aren't buying the 360. No Japanese people buying the 360 = precisely dick in terms of exclusive Japanese games, much less RPGs.

Time to start browsing Monster.com and mailing that resume.

[Margalis]

The XBox this year sold 12k units in all of Japan. It sold less than the Gameboy Advance. No, not the Advance SP - the regular old Gameboy advance!

I wonder what sold more, XBox or NGage?

Working Designs is weird. How much can it cost to run what is essentially a game translation business? But then they would do things like actual reprogram some of the game, change the control schemes, etc. If they just did translation and didn't change anything else they could probably sell 90% of the same volume at 10% of the cost.

[schild]

Working Designs is weird. How much can it cost to run what is essentially a game translation business? But then they would do things like actual reprogram some of the game, change the control schemes, etc. If they just did translation and didn't change anything else they could probably sell 90% of the same volume at 10% of the cost.

Requesting an interview right now. Thanks for the idea.

[Mazakiel]

Well, with some games at least, it wasn't just 'changing control schemes', but recording new voice talent, redoing cinematics (I believe, at least, memory's hazy), even changing some plot for the port.  See Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete.  As I understand it, they redid ALL the voices, including a significant plot change where a party member did not leave early in the game but continued on alot further past that point that they left in the original Sega CD version.  They gave it alot of polish and improvement in my opinion, and definitely made it worth purchasing.  If it had been just a generic port from the Sega CD to the PS, I doubt I would have even bought it.  It'd have been at best a rental.  But they redid the game, and I got to replay a game I enjoyed way back when, and alot (well, apparently not as many as I'd like with news like this) of people got to experience a good RPG that was unfortunately relegated to Sega CD. 

[Margalis]

I remember for some Zelda-clone "Shining" game that came out ("Shining Wisdom" maybe?) they changed the game so you could have 2 items equipped at a time or something like that. In the original you had to constantly switch between items. (Or something- hazy memory)

But it seems to me you could just translate the text, add some subtitles and still make a healthy profit. Most of the games they brought over were pretty niche to begin with. I'm pretty sure most of the people buying "Growlanser Generations" are going to buy it regardless of whether any controls have been changed or voices re-dubbed.

It just seems like a bad formula - spend a lot of time, money and effort on something very niche.

It actually turns me *off* that they do stuff like change the plot.

[eldaec]

I opened this thread wondering how the closure of a publisher could possibly threaten the existence of an entire country.

That aside, sad news ofc.