Working Designs - Development Platforms

Development Platforms

Working Designs published games for the Sega CD and TurboGrafx-16/CD due to the appeal of the CD medium, instead of the more popular cartridge-based Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis. When the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn were released, Victor Ireland met with then-President of SCEA Bernie Stolar to discuss translating and publishing Sony's Japanese launch SRPG Arc the Lad. Stolar outright refused Ireland, saying that RPGs were not the future, and said that WD's games didn't help the Sega CD and TGCD. This sparked a feud between Ireland and Stolar, and Ireland resigned his company to making Sega Saturn games, as the Nintendo 64 was considered to be too expensive to consider publishing on.

Working Designs often changed postponed releases from upwards of a year or more. The final Sega Saturn game released in the US, Magic Knight Rayearth, was unintentionally delayed for over three years. When Sony let go of Stolar, and Sega hired him, Ireland finished up his Saturn projects and moved the company to the PlayStation, where they released the most single titles on a console (10 titles) in their history. The company finally managed to get the rights to Arc the Lad and its sequels, which Sony's new management insisted that they bundle together as one game. Ireland's feud with Stolar led them to ignore Sega's Dreamcast console in favor of the PlayStation 2, but friction with Sony's approval process was starting to cost Working Designs money.

However, Working Designs didn't move to the Nintendo GameCube or Microsoft's Xbox system. Moreover, Ireland had been pursuing the rights to titles on both consoles, but kept finding himself outbid on the few titles that matched his company's skills. When asked why he passed on Lunar Legend for the Game Boy Advance, a title he already owned the right of first-refusal on, he said it was because the game was mediocre and because he still disliked the expense of publishing cartridges. He initially dismissed the Nintendo DS, saying that although production costs had come down significantly, the high wait times were still costly, and endorsed Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) and may have been pursuing titles for that handheld. Upon his company's demise, Ireland quietly withdrew his support of the PSP, and voiced his support for the Xbox 360.