Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat interviews Ed Fries about the 20th anniversary of the Xbox.
Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat interviews Ed Fries about the 20th anniversary of the Xbox.
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Ed Fries interview — From building games for the original Xbox to investing in gaming startups

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 26 min

Without good games, the original Xbox would have crumbled in defeat before the gaming might of Sony and Nintendo. While Microsoft is a solid contender in game consoles today with a stable of 25 game studios and more than 2,500 game developers, it seemed kind of puny two decades ago.

When the original Xbox launched, the company had barely 400 people spread across 10 studios. And while it had Age of Empires and Microsoft Flight Simulator for the PC, it had virtually nothing in games. The task of building a portfolio of console games fell to Ed Fries, who was head of Microsoft Game Studios from 1995 to 2004.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.