Ubisoft Montpellier built Jade for one game — Beyond Good & Evil, released in 2003 — and named it after that game’s protagonist. It should have been a footnote. Instead the engine was handed round Ubisoft’s studios for seven years of shipped titles, turning up under the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the first Rayman Raving Rabbids games and two Naruto titles.
That is the story worth telling, because it is unusual: a small studio’s bespoke engine became a shared Ubisoft platform, and then quietly stopped. This page covers what Jade was, every game verified as running on it, what replaced it at Montpellier — and why Beyond Good & Evil 2, despite being the sequel to the game Jade was built for, is not a Jade game.
What Is the Jade Engine?
Jade is a proprietary cross-platform game engine written in C++, developed by Ubisoft Montpellier for Beyond Good & Evil (2003) and named after that game’s protagonist. Ubisoft studios shipped games on it for roughly seven years, from 2003 to 2010, most notably the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy. Montpellier moved on to the LyN engine around 2009, and Beyond Good & Evil 2 is being built on a different engine entirely, called Voyager. Ubisoft has never published a Jade SDK, download or licensing programme..
| Developer | Ubisoft Montpellier — founded 1994 as Ubi Pictures by Michel Ancel and Frédéric Houde |
| Written in | C++ |
| Named after | Jade, the protagonist of Beyond Good & Evil |
| Debut | Beyond Good & Evil, 11 November 2003 |
| Last verified title | Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Wii and PSP versions, 2010 |
| Platforms | PS2, GameCube, Xbox, Windows, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PSP, Nintendo DS, mobile, macOS |
| Licence | Proprietary. Never sold or licensed outside Ubisoft |
| Successors at Montpellier | LyN (around 2009); Voyager for Beyond Good & Evil 2 |
Games Built on Jade
The titles below are the ones we could trace to Jade in engine databases, developer statements or the games’ own documented credits. Note how quickly it stopped being a Montpellier-only tool.
| Game | Year | Studio |
|---|---|---|
| Beyond Good & Evil | 2003 | Ubisoft Montpellier, with Ubisoft Milan |
| Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time | 2003 | Ubisoft Montreal |
| Prince of Persia: Warrior Within | 2004 | Ubisoft Montreal |
| Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones | 2005 | Ubisoft Montreal, with Ubisoft Casablanca |
| Peter Jackson’s King Kong | 2005 | Ubisoft Montpellier, directed by Michel Ancel |
| Rayman Raving Rabbids | 2006 | Ubisoft Montpellier |
| TMNT | 2007 | Ubisoft |
| Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 | 2007 | Ubisoft Paris |
| Naruto: Rise of a Ninja | 2007 | Ubisoft Montreal |
| Naruto: The Broken Bond | 2008 | Ubisoft Montreal |
| James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game (Wii) | 2009 | Ubisoft |
| Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Wii, PSP) | 2010 | Ubisoft |
Two things are worth pulling out of that table.
The Sands of Time trilogy ran on it. Prince of Persia as a series began in 1989, long before Jade existed — but the 2003 reboot and its two sequels were built on the engine Montpellier had made for Beyond Good & Evil, by a different studio in Montreal. That is the single most consequential thing Jade did, and it is routinely left out of engine directories.
The Forgotten Sands split across engines. The 2010 game’s Wii and PSP versions used Jade; the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC versions did not. If you see The Forgotten Sands listed flatly as a Jade game, that is the nuance being lost.
The Naruto Fork Nobody Mentions
When Ubisoft Montreal took Jade for Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, it did not just use it — it forked it. Producer Sébastien Puel explained at the time: “We based Naruto: Rise of a Ninja’s engine on an Ubisoft engine called Jade”, adding that the team used it as a starting platform and layered on enough custom work that they gave the result its own name — Fox.
Worth a disambiguation, since the name collides: Ubisoft’s Fox has nothing to do with Konami’s Fox Engine, the later technology behind Metal Gear Solid V. Same word, unrelated engines, different companies.
Why Beyond Good & Evil 2 Is Not a Jade Game
This is the question most people arrive with, and the answer is no.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 is being developed on Voyager, a different engine. Jade was a 2003 design built around the PS2 generation; a sequel announced at Ubidays 2008, re-revealed at E3 2017 and still in production could not sensibly ship on it.
The sequel’s history has been turbulent — creative director Michel Ancel left Ubisoft in 2020, and the project has run without a release window for years. Checked in September 2026, Ubisoft’s public statements still described the project as in development and unaffected by the company’s wider restructuring. No release date has been announced, and continued development is not a guarantee of release.
Jade did get one more outing, though. Beyond Good & Evil: 20th Anniversary Edition arrived on 25 June 2024 for Switch, PS4, PS5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, developed with Virtuos under Ubisoft’s supervision. It brings up to 4K textures, 60 fps, auto-save, cross-platform cloud saves and a remastered soundtrack, plus a new treasure-hunt mission that ties the original’s story toward the sequel. That followed an earlier HD remaster in 2011, handled by Ubisoft Shanghai for Xbox 360 and PS3.
What Replaced It at Montpellier
Jade did not have a dramatic ending; Montpellier simply built something else. Around 2009 the studio developed the LyN engine for Rabbids Go Home, and Beyond Good & Evil 2 moved to Voyager.
That pattern is normal at Ubisoft, which has run several in-house engines in parallel rather than standardising on one. Jade sits alongside Ubisoft Anvil, built in Montreal for Assassin’s Creed; Dunia, the Far Cry engine that began life as a CryEngine derivative; Snowdrop from Massive in Malmö; and the UbiArt Framework, the 2D-first engine behind Rayman Origins and Legends.
Which is worth knowing if you came here via Rayman: the modern Rayman platformers are UbiArt, not Jade. Jade’s Rayman connection is the Raving Rabbids spin-offs, not the mainline games.
Can You Download the Jade Engine?
No. Jade is proprietary Ubisoft technology. Ubisoft has never published an SDK, download, pricing model or licensing programme for it, and there is no public documentation.
What does exist is a modding scene around the games themselves. Community projects have produced compatibility fixes and tools for the Sands of Time trilogy and Beyond Good & Evil on modern systems — those work on shipped game files, not on the engine, and they are unaffiliated with Ubisoft.
For a licensable engine with a comparable feel for character-led action-adventure work, the practical options are Unreal Engine or Godot.
Key Takeaways
- Jade was built by Ubisoft Montpellier for Beyond Good & Evil (2003) and named after the game’s protagonist.
- The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy ran on it — built in Montreal on Montpellier’s engine. This is Jade’s biggest credit and the one most often missed.
- It was used across Ubisoft studios, including Montreal, Paris, Milan and Casablanca, for roughly seven years.
- Naruto: Rise of a Ninja forked it into a derivative Ubisoft called Fox — unrelated to Konami’s Fox Engine.
- Beyond Good & Evil 2 does not use Jade. It is being built on Voyager, and Ubisoft’s public statements, checked in September 2026, still describe it as in development.
- Jade’s last outing was the 2024 20th Anniversary Edition of the original, made with Virtuos.
- There is no public way to obtain it. Ubisoft publishes no SDK, download or licensing programme for Jade.
Frequently Asked Questions
Conclusion
Jade’s real legacy is not Beyond Good & Evil, much as that game deserves its reputation. It is that a bespoke engine built by one French studio for one commercially unsuccessful game ended up carrying the Prince of Persia reboot — a series that sold in the millions and reset Ubisoft’s action-adventure template for the decade that followed.
Jade is no longer a publicly documented active engine, there is no public route to it, and no successor carries the name. For the engines Ubisoft runs now, and for everything you can actually license, our directory of 100+ C and C++ game engines sorts the field by category.
