Yup, wouldn't surprise me at all. Bioware, the lapdogs of mighty Microsoft.
They sure like to compliment themselves, don't they?
Anyhow, the game is sounding extremely cool, if they make it all work. They're developing one part of space simulators that I've always found lacking: planet exploration. In every game I've ever played that took place in space, you're kind of stuck on your spaceship. Sure, you can almost always dock on some weird looking spacestation dangling around a planet, but you can never continue down to the surface of the planet and keep exploring that. Most often, you can't even explore the spacestation either, you just get a screen where you trade goods, upgrade your ship etc.
I love how Mass Effect seems to be treating the openendedness of the game. I really, really hope they pull this ambitious project off and that it doesn't end up being a huge game with lots of really shallow gameplay bits. That's the danger in trying something of this scope.