I assume it did well enough to warrant a sequel, but I was wondering.

There seems to be a lot of love for Mass Effect on Giant Bomb, and it did pretty well critically, but it's also a pretty hardcore game compared to others. Not everyone is into walking about and talking to fake people lol. I was just curious how this sold as opposed to other BioWare games and stuff.

From what I remember, Jade Empire didn't sell well, which is a shame, because I love that game too. Too bad it's more of a niche market (martial arts.) I know BioWare was pretty passionate about Jade Empire, but I wonder if they'll ever made a sequel since the sales weren't as good?

Uh, well enough to warrant a Platinum Hits edition. So what does it take for a game to go Platinum? According to these dudes, one million copies of Mass Effect were sold in its first three weeks.
The I-don't-really-know answer? A lot.

According to a couple different sites it sold about 1.6 million copies in its first 3 months. That's not bad. Don't know what the up to date sales numbers are though.

Ah alright, that's good to know.

Also, this may be a little off-topic but I found some stuff on the Jade Empire wikipedia:

"In 2005, senior staff at BioWare suggested the possibility of a sequel; however, on January 2007 BioWare staff stated there were no plans to develop Jade Empire 2. Despite this denial, hints of Jade Empire 2 have surfaced as recently as December 2007.

On January 2, 2008, News of Jade Empire 2 leaked to the net via The Mercury News. Dean Takahashi published an article stating that he spoke with someone who saw code for Jade Empire 2. "It's coming for the Xbox 360, and it's real." Microsoft did not comment on the rumor."

Enough, I assume, to give EA pause enough to pull out their check books and buy BioWare (that sounds awkward outloud). And at the time, Microsoft trumpeted its success; it got a bit drowned out, because it came out around the same time as Halo 3, which Microsoft marketed to high hell. So for it to make any dent at all was pretty remarkable.

That said, I don't think it was a crossover success in any real sense; I think a lot of the people who are keen on on KotOR probably picked it up and people like me who thought it just looked like an amazing new IP. And as I said, EA was impressed enough to seemingly buy BioWare with the implicit plan of putting our more Mass Effect products.