papers without reading them. Before Kate boards a plane that will bring her back to New York, she quickly changes her mind and rushes to rejoin Hans on the train, offering to help him realise his dream, abandoning her job and her unfaithful fiancé back home. Development The game was produced entirely in Montreal by 35 people under the direction of the late Benoît Sokal on a budget of €2 million using Virtools Development Environment 2.1. Its budget was the highest of any Microïds game by that time. Benoît Sokal indicated in an interview that at one time the development team were considering to create one single game for the Syberia story, but decided not to, as it was so large. Sokal's earlier game, Amerzone, is located in the same fictional universe and Syberia contains some references to it. Reception Sales Syberia was a commercial success. According to Cedric Orvoine of Microïds, the game surpassed 225,000 units in sales by February 2003, and had achieved nearly 350,000 global sales across its console and computer versions by September. In France, the Agence française pour le jeu vidéo reported that Syberias computer release had sold 50,000 units by September 2003, before the launch of its console versions. Microïds announced plans that month to ship 50,000 and 20,000 units, respectively, of the PlayStation and Xbox versions in France. In North America, its computer version sold 60,158 retail copies during 2003 alone, and Orvoine noted in early 2004 that its Xbox version was "selling way over our initial expectations" in the region. Michel Bams of Benoît Sokal's White Birds Productions said that Syberia had reached "nearly 500,000 copies" in global sales that February, a number it surpassed by late 2005, according to Ubisoft. However, Jane Jensen noted in 2004 that the game had "not been very profitable" for The Adventure Company, which, among other factors, led to the cancellation of her project Gray Matter. Bill Tiller reported Syberias sales in the United States as 161,000 units by 2006. Worldwide sales of the overall Syberia series had topped 1 million units by 2008, and rose to 3 million by 2016, before the release of Syberia 3. Critical reviews According to The New York Times, Syberia "received euphoric reviews" from critics. Based on 26 reviews, review aggregation site Metacritic estimated the game's critical reception as "generally favorable". USA Today called the game "a solid pick", and