When Resident Evil 4 first came out, it was a GameCube exclusive. The popular belief at the time was that Nintendo simply threw a ton of cash at Capcom for first dibs. But as it turns out, there was another reason, though profits certainly played a part.
Kotaku points out something that's buried deep within the aforementioned Eurogamer piece that details why the first Xbox was such a dud in Japan. For starters, series creator Shinji Mikami had grown frustrated with the PS2, which was difficult to work with. Hence the decision to move to another platform.
But the thing is, because his team's bonuses were tied to game sales, he had choose Resident Evil's new home very carefully. There were two options: the Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox, which were both on the horizon.
Mikami met with MS first and it was a disaster. Things started fine at first, but quickly devolved. Until finally, as Eurogamer explains:
Eventually an exasperated Mikami boiled it down: 'what is your philosophy? Sony says games are entertainment, something larger, fuelled by the Emotion Engine. Nintendo says games are toys, created by the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, perhaps the greatest game developer of all time. What do you feel?' Microsoft had no answer.
Immediately afterward, Mikiami went to visit Nintendo, and as a result, RE4 became a GameCube exclusive.
