Victor Ireland, President of Working Designs, recently announced on the company's message board that it will not be showing any of its three upcoming games at this year's E3. He cited a dispute with Sony Computer Entertainment America over concept approval. The games in question, Growlanser II, Growlanser III, and Goemon, were all announced for release in 2002 but have yet to appear on the company's calendar.

The two Growlanser games were released in Japan in 2001 by Atlus. Goemon was released by Konami in Japan. Several of Working Designs' recent releases have seen significant delays. Its last localization was Arc the Lad Collection in April 2001.

Sony and Working Designs were at odds over the games' graphics. The final deadline for keeping a booth was in February, and at that time the problem was not yet resolved. Ireland stated that due to the dispute, it would have been financially unsound to pay the booth price for games that could not be officially listed. The dispute is now largely resolved and Working Designs plans to continue promotion of the games in the near future. "I would expect we'll release information and pics before E3," he continued. Ominously, Ireland added, "I don't think how it was resolved will please many people." We should find out specifically what Working Designs' president means sometime before E3.