100 Things You Never Knew About Resident Evil
4. Resident Evil 4 On Xbox
Much has been made of the long, winding and messy road to Resident Evil 4 with numerous versions cancelled along the way before Capcom arrived at the game that totally shook up in the industry. But even aside from it's creative struggles, just finding a home for the title nearly went completely differently.
Kevin Bachus, head of Xbox's third party relations, once recounted a story of a meeting with Shinji Mikami around Christmas 2000. The rumours were that Mikami-san was frustrated with developing for the PS2. With Microsoft's debut home system on the horizon, Bachus saw his chance to coerce Mikami-san to the green side of things. However, the meeting - which all took place in Japanese - fell apart very quickly when the father of Resident Evil asked Bachus and his interpreter what Xbox's creedo was and was dissatisfied with the answer.
Mikami-san ended the dinner abruptly, and Bachus chastised his interpreter for not delivering Xbox's vision of gaming as "considered to be art, much like film" (which, actually, sounds like something Mikami-san would've agreed with). He pursued a second chat with Mikami-san days later but by this time it was too late and Capcom had signed a deal with Nintendo which would, of course, become the de facto home for Biohazard for the generation - from the REmake to RE4.
Had this initial meeting gone well we could've seen a Christmas miracle and a very different world. As it stands, the original Xbox is the only home console released since 1996 that never had a Resident Evil game on it.