and gameplay, but noted the game's "grainy" cutscenes and some technical issues. Steve Butts, writing for IGN, generally enjoyed the game but found the combat repetitive and noted a lack of new content. Niel Booth, reviewing for PALGN, said that the game was enjoyable despite graphical and technical issues he raised. While sentiments towards the story and gameplay remained unchanged for the PC version, people noted that the original gameplay faults were heightened by the PC controls and that the graphics looked dated by modern gaming standards. Later responses have continued to be positive. In 2010, the game was included in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. In a 2015 article, Mike Williams of USgamer said, "Jade Empire was such a unique game for BioWare, but it's one the studio never followed up on." Sales Upon its release, Jade Empire debuted at #3 on The NPD Group's video game sales chart for the month of April 2005. Writing for GameSpot, Tor Thorsen noted that its third-place finish came "despite [its] being released in the middle of April". It also secured second place on that month's Xbox chart, behind the debut of Doom 3 on the platform. In May, the game fell to last place on NPD's multiplatform top 20, and to seventh in the Xbox rankings. It was absent from both lists by the following month. According to NPD, the game's North American sales surpassed 385,000 units by May 2006. In the United Kingdom, Jade Empire debuted at #7 on Chart-Track's multiplatform sales list for the week ending April 23. David Jenkins of Gamasutra called this "an unremarkable opening", and suggested that its sales had been damaged by competition from the newly released Unreal Championship 2. It fell to 12th place in its second week, and to 20th in its third. IGN's staff wrote of this decline, "The Bioware-developed game has been well reviewed over the past month, but that hasn't helped it from rapidly dropping down the charts." It was absent from Chart-Track's multiplatform top 40 by its fourth week of release. Conversely, on the firm's sales list for Xbox games, Jade Empire opened in first place and held the position for its debut 14 days. It fell to #5 in its third week, but remained in the top 10 until the week ending June 18. By the end of 2005, Jade Empires sales