NEWS - Wednesday, August 31, 2005
BioWare Talks Up Xbox 360 Development
World-renowned developer BioWare Corp is recruiting potential employees to expand development teams working on Xbox 360 games, IGN learned today. A BioWare spokesperson told IGN two unannounced games are being developed by two different BioWare teams. BioWare has a total of four teams at work currently. Though the spokesperson wouldn't reveal which games they are, both Microsoft Game Studios Executive Shane Kim and BioWare team members have said in the past that Jade Empire 2 (working title) is definitely in development. "We have a couple of Xbox 360 titles in development right now," said a BioWare spokesperson. "But we're recruiting across the board for all four development teams. We have two teams working on Xbox 360 titles, one team on Dragon Age (for the PC), and one on digital distribution, which is ongoing content created for Neverwinter Nights." The second BioWare 360 game is very likely the combination first-person shooter RPG BioWare spoke about with IGN in December (in which the developer said an FPS RPG was "inevitable"). This game is being built using Epic's upcoming Unreal Engine 3. We expect Microsoft and/or BioWare to announce this game sometime in 2006. Although Dragon Age has been announced solely for the PC, previous reports suggest BioWare might bring the PC RPG to Xbox 360 as well. BioWare had no comment on the topic. As for the success of Jade Empire, which was well received critically but not financially (it now sells for $19.99 at EB Games), BioWare said this: "We thought it did well for a new intellectual property. Jade sold more than 500,000 units worldwide, and for a new IP that's good. People embraced it. You'll have to ask Microsoft about the pricing." Microsoft had no comment on Jade Empire's lower pricing. We'll have more soon on BioWare's 360 gamesSource: http://xbox360.ign.com/
