New Xbox development stories shared by former Microsoft employee

Ed Fries, a member of the team responsible for creating the first Xbox, spoke at the 2021 WN Conference in Seattle, and during his talk, he shared lots of nuggets about what went on behind the scenes at Microsoft during the original Xbox’s inception, development, and release.

Fries covered a wide range of topics when discussing the original Xbox’s creation (via GeekWire). His ties to the console extend way back to before the system was even a concept, as he’d worked at Microsoft since the 1980s. Then, in the year 2000, on Valentine’s Day, the Xbox project was officially greenlit.

Some of the best bits of trivia Fries shared at the WN Conference include that Microsoft failed to acquire EA and Westwood Studios, along with the fact that the original Xbox’s unshrinkable design hastened the release of the Xbox 360 since Microsoft couldn’t copy the PS2’s strategy of re-releasing a shrunken version of an existing machine.

But those pieces of knowledge are just the tip of the iceberg. Fries also shared that Steve Ballmer was super jazzed about Xbox Live, enough to pound a table to the point of breaking its speakerphone during a meeting in 2003.

Fries estimated that in the early years, the Xbox initiative lost Microsoft $1 billion per year. In addition, he shared that a point of contention within the original Xbox team was whether they could translate the popular PC FPS experience to consoles—a debate Halo put an end to.

You can find other nuggets of info over at Geekwire, but these are among the juiciest for you to dwell on while you think about the long road that led to the Xbox Series X and the best Xbox Game Pass games.