Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (
KotOR) is a
role-playing video gameRole-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...
developed by
BioWareBioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts...
and published by
LucasArtsLucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
. It was released for the
XboxThe Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
on July 15, 2003, for
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
on November 19, 2003, and on September 7, 2004 for Mac OS X. The Xbox version is playable on
Xbox 360The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
with its Backward Compatibility feature. The PC version was re-released as part of the
Star Wars: The Best of PCStar Wars: The Best of PC is a compilation of five Star Wars games that have been released for Windows over the previous five years. It was released in North America on November 21, 2006 and in Europe on November 24, 2006. It is a limited edition compilation that was only available for a short time...
collection in 2006 as a limited release.
The sequel,
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II The Sith Lords, was developed by
Obsidian EntertainmentObsidian Entertainment is an American video game developer founded in 2003 after the disestablishment of Interplay Productions' Black Isle Studios, for PC and console systems...
at BioWare's suggestion as BioWare wanted to focus on their own intellectual properties.