When people talk about BioWare, the conversation almost always centers around Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or even the studio’s early Baldur’s Gate days.
But Jade Empire, a martial arts RPG set in a world inspired by Chinese mythology, could have been just as big—if not for what BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk calls the “absolute moronic advice” that doomed it.
Speaking on the My Perfect Console podcast, Zeschuk recalled one of his biggest regrets: taking Microsoft's advice to drop Jade Empire at the end of the original Xbox’s life cycle.
According to him, if the game had launched just a few months later as an Xbox 360 title, it might have stood a real chance at becoming a long-running franchise. Instead, It was left in the dust when the new generation of consoles came out.
Released in April 2005, Jade Empire was BioWare’s attempt to break away from the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic formula and create something original. It checked all the boxes for a hit: immersive role-playing, a strong plot, and a setting inspired by Chinese folklore instead of the typical medieval fantasy or sci-fi worlds.
Jade Empire was well-received by critics but didn’t manage to pull in a big audience, and Zeschuk believes the timing (and Microsoft) of its launch was to blame. Microsoft convinced BioWare that launching at the end of the Xbox’s lifespan was a smart move, telling them, “No, no, you should release it now, right at the end of the cycle, because it's a great time.” In hindsight, Zeschuk calls this “the stupidest thing ever.”
As Jade Empire made its debut, the hype surrounding the Xbox 360 was growing, and players were already anticipating the next-gen consoles. Six months later, the Xbox 360 dropped in November 2005, and all eyes shifted from the original Xbox and its games.
Because of this, Jade Empire didn’t get the chance to really take off. According to Zeschuk, if BioWare had pushed for more time and released Jade Empire as a launch title for the Xbox 360, it could have changed everything. "Give us six months, give us the chance to make it a launch title for the 360, and we'd have another franchise," he said. The extra time spent in development could have helped the team enhance the game, fine-tune the combat, and make the most of the new hardware.
The Xbox 360’s debut wasn’t heavy on RPGs. Microsoft’s early first-party offerings included games like Perfect Dark Zero, Project Gotham Racing 3, and Condemned: Criminal Origins—none of which scratched the deep, story-driven RPG itch. If Jade Empire had been marketed as one of the console's top RPGs, it could have attracted a much larger fanbase and locked in its place for BioWare.
Instead, the game was released at an awkward time—too late to dominate the original Xbox’s final months and too early to benefit from the fresh excitement of the next console.
Even though Jade Empire didn’t hit big commercially, its dedicated fanbase continued to hope for a sequel. For years, rumors about Jade Empire 2 floated around, and BioWare even started working on it at one point. The sequel was reportedly set a few decades after the first game. Unfortunately, the project never made it past the early stages.
BioWare was all-in on Mass Effect and Dragon Age around that point, and those games ended up being the big players in the studio’s next era. In the end, Jade Empire 2 was left on the shelf, and the franchise was forgotten. Back in 2019, EA sparked some hope by filing a new Jade Empire trademark, but nothing ever came of it.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is also not doing as well as hoped, and BioWare has been hit with layoffs and a restructuring. The studio is now fully dedicated to the next Mass Effect. That leaves Jade Empire in a problematic spot, making a revival seem more unlikely than ever. Reflecting on it, Zeschuk views Jade Empire as a missed opportunity, one that might have turned out very differently with better timing.
If it had launched as an Xbox 360 title, it might have found the success it needed to grow into something bigger, just like Mass Effect and Dragon Age did.