Late Night Consoling

Working Designs president Victor Ireland has officially announced via his company's web forum that the studio has closed down. All staffers have been laid off and the offices are empty. Working Designs was best known for its localizations of various Japanese RPG series, most notably the Lunar games. It had a reputation for particularly high-quality presentation and translations.

Ireland cited frustrations with not being able to bring planned games to market as the primary reason for Working Design's closing. "Though almost finished and substantially improved from the Japanese release, Goemon is dead for the US, and that was really the final straw. 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," he said. "Sony has made it clear that they do not want the details of their dealings with any publisher made public. Suffice to say that you would buy what we wanted to sell if we could sell it." His comments seem to indicate that the company had problems with Sony certification for PS2.

It seems that Ireland does not have any plan to leave the industry, however. He sees "a ton of promise" in RPGs for Xbox 360, and has already contacted Microsoft about potential dealings. Though the Working Designs name will not be used, he stated that he will be working with former team members in his new endeavors.

Recently, various illicitly obtained internal documents circulated to Best Buy stores indicated that the electronics chain will be receiving a new shipment of Xbox 360s to go on sale December 18. The stores were instructed to open at regular business hours that day and not to announce the date in advance. Today, probably due to pressure created by the accidental leak of those documents, a Best Buy representative confirmed that news and noted that the company does not not accept preorders. Before the information was made public, the document indicated that Best Buy hoped to avoid another more long lines such as during the console's launch but that situation may now be inevitable, if less extreme. The representative in question claimed that his store would be receiving "about 20 to 30" units.

PJ McNealy of American Technology Research thinks that the shipment will be lower than Microsoft had planned. He claims that Microsoft's repeated claim that restocking would be continuous but slow was merely an attempt to lower expectation that would be exceeded later on, but it seems that Microsoft will not be able to meet their own internal expectations. That said, he still expects 300,000 units to hit stores this month, which, depending on whose intial sales figures you believe, is only about 25% less than the number of consoles shipped in the first week.

It seems that lower than expected sales of Microsoft's Xbox 360 in Japan may inadvertently help out gamers in North America and Europe who haven't been able to get their hands on the machine. Sales numbers from Japanese firms Enterbrain and Media Create indicate that the console has sold only 28% or less (42,000 units) of its initial launch quantity in Japan. The machine failed to improve on the original Xbox's opening weekend sales, selling only one third the number that Microsoft's first machine did in the same period. Xbox 360 owners are buying fewer games as well, with only .91 games sold for each system, compared to 1.45 for the first Xbox.

The upside to all of this is that Microsoft had originally planned to bring in more consoles over the next few weeks, but it seems that may now be unnecessary. Given the shortage in both North America and Europe, those units are better needed elsewhere.

Only a few months after purchasing Australian developer Ratbag, unconfirmed reports from staffers claim that Midway has completely shut the studio down. It had been renamed Midway Studios - Australia. According to the claims, the studio had been hiring as recently as last week; the closing came as a complete surprise. Midway has recently purchased and rebranded several studios.

Previously, Ratbag was working on an original title called Scavenger. That title was allegedly cancelled when Midway took ownership, and the team was set to work on a different game. Assumedly, this new game was not shaping up well, and Midway decided to can the studio.

Things continue to not look so cool for publisher Majesco (NASDAQ symbol: COOL), which has had a year full of financial setbacks following poor sales of GlyphX's Advent Rising (Xbox, PC) and Double Fine's critically acclaimed Psychonauts (PS2, Xbox, PC). Today the company announced the sale of two of its high profile projects. First up is Climax's Ghost Rider (PS2, Xbox, PSP), a tie-in with the upcoming comic-based film of the same name starring Nicolas Cage (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and directed by Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil). The other project, probably more promising to gamers, is The Darkness (PS3, X360). That title is under development by Starbreeze, the studio behind the surprise movie-based hit The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay (Xbox, PC). The two properties went for $8M, which Majesco claims will be used to keep the company on track and plan for future endeavors.