Ed Fries played a big role in securing the long-term stability of the Xbox brand, and served as vice president of game publishing during the first Xbox era.
He's the ideal person, then, to talk about Microsoft's efforts to court Japanese developers in the very early years of the project.
In an interview with Expansion Pass (thanks, GamesRadar) to mark the 25th anniversary of Xbox, Fries admitted that he would love to have secured Final Fantasy for the original Xbox, and explains that he regularly held talks with Square at the time, as well as many other notable Japanese publishers.
While Sony had a stranglehold thanks to the amazing success of its PS2 console, Fries says that some Japanese studios were keen to work with Xbox:
"Some of them we were able to do deals with, some of them we weren't. They [Xbox] were able to do some deals after I left with Square, but it was always like, a tough discussion because they wanted Sony to have competition, but they couldn't be too overt for their support of Xbox. They couldn't make it too obvious they were supporting Xbox."
The reason for this fear is pretty clear when you think about it. Sony was the King, and its PS2 system was the world's biggest-selling home console (it still is, in fact).
Annoying Sony could spell bad news for publishers, as Fries explains. "Sony could punish them if they wanted to," he says, with potential examples being the withholding of development kits or not pushing their games via official channels.
That's not to say every Japanese company was scared of rocking the boat; Fries cites Tecmo as an example, which released Dead or Alive 3 and Dead or Alive 4 exclusively on Xbox. "They did it kind of to tweak Sony because they wanted Sony to have competitors because otherwise they're a monopoly, and monopolies, you know, just do whatever they want."