Greg Zeschuk: “Jade Empire as Xbox 360 Launch Title Would Have Been Massive”

Speaking to GIBiz in a recent interview, regarding his time in EA and on the next generation of consoles, Bioware co-founder Greg Zeschuk, who had retired from the company alongside Ray Muzyka, talked about the few things he would’ve gone back and changed.

One of those things would be making the martial arts RPG Jade Empire, which received rave reviews on the original Xbox, an Xbox 360 launch title. As Zeschuk states, “I think making Jade Empire a 360 launch title would have been massive.

That’s a really specific example, but we made a choice, and there are a lot of factors that go into these choices and you can’t revisit them. But it’s interesting, because it reminds me of what’s going on right now with analysts saying that game sales are down because people are waiting for new consoles, and we released Jade Empire into that kind of window.

“In retrospect, it would’ve been great to put off a bit and polish the game a bit more.”

“We never really had a true launch title right at the beginning, and that would’ve been fun to have done that once. Mass Effect 1 was in a launch window but ended up kind of being about nine months later or something. It would’ve been cool to have a game at launch because it could have changed a lot of dynamics.”

Hit up the full interview for even more telling details.