Syberia's 3 April 1st announcement is not a joke, if you can help it

Emmanuel Olivier, President of Microids explained that their recent announcement of Syberia 3 was not an April Fool's Day joke. After countless messages and questions, Emmanuel stepped in and decided to bring details to the light.

He assures that this highly expected game will launch for PC. However, PS3 version is now unlikely as SONY [the company loves to see its name in all-caps. We don't - Ed.], the sole decision-maker - is against it. Benoît Sokal, the author of Syberia and Syberia 2 said many times that he would create a sequel only if he has enough financial means to create an exceptional game. While Microids is ready to support his efforts, the company believes that to create a high quality game they need to develop it for both PC and consoles. Given the size of this project, it is natural that Microids has to amortize the required development costs.

What makes this situation somewhat fishy is that Sony is not only against development of Syberia 3 for PS3 but the company is also known for prior censuring of Microids. Six years ago, SCEA [Sony Computer Entertainment America] denied the release of Syberia PS2 in the United States. The same PS2 version was published normally in Europe. Same censorship was applied to several other Microids titles in territories covered by SCEA.

Authors and producers face great risks when producing games for console as Sony tends to be quite fickle and can approve or deny them at the last minute. Sony demands such massive royalties that they can seriously cripple the financial ability of independent producers - Microids paid 15 Million Euro in royalties for releasing the titles on the Sony's troubled platform.

This "censorship" situation placed Microids game development in jeopardy, because they could not release games in the vast US market. Add excessive royalty payments to Sony and it is no wonder that Microids could not develop a good sequel to Syberia series.
In order to prove that there is market interest for Syberia 3 on Sony consoles, Emmanuel launched an SOS message to all the Syberia fans - send all your messages of support to: supporToSyberia3PS3@microids.com. So go there and help this guys make a great game. Two line e-mail is sometimes all that is needed.

Editor's Note: Something doesn't sit right in this story, and we will pursue it to get some answers - however, given the current market position of Sony consoles [firm #3 spot for PS3], we would rather advise Microids to rather "flip the bird" to the number three and create a memorable gaming experience on Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360, real market leaders.