Wii wins big at game BAFTAs against PS3 and Xbox 360
By Dave Parrack
On Tuesday night, BAFTA (The British Academy of Film and Television Arts) held their annual booze up, otherwise known as an awards ceremony for the games industry. In the best tradition of awards ceremony hosts I’ll announce: And the winner is… The Wii.
In 2004 BAFTA started presenting awards to the games industry as well as their huge film and television award ceremonies. It’s actually called the British Academy Video Games Awards but I don’t think BAVGA really works, sounding like some sort of rare STD.
The latest ceremony was held on Tuesday evening and the only console to come out from it with any real credit was the Wii.
Out of 13 categories, the Wii, or more specifically the game Wii Sports, won 6 of them. The Xbox 360 picked up 3 awards and the PS2 was awarded 4. Hang on, have I just made a typo? Ermm nope, the PS2 won 4, the PS3, I’m sad to say, won nothing, nada, not a jot. Oops.
The full list of winners is as follows:
Innovation - Wii Sports (Wii)
Artistic Achievement - Okami (PS2)
Story and Character - God of War 2 (PS2)
Strategy and Simulation - Wii Sports (Wii)
Casual - Wii Sports (Wii)
Gameplay - Wii Sports (Wii)
Multiplayer - Wii Sports (Wii)
Action & Adventure - Crackdown (Xbox 360)
Technical Achievement - God of War 2 (PS2)
Sports - Wii Sports (Wii)
Original Score - Okami (PS2)
Use of Audio - Crackdown (Xbox 360)
Best Game - Bioshock (Xbox 360)
I really can’t even begin to think about what this means for the current gen consoles, but I’ll have a good try… it’s my job after all.
Firstly, the Wii did great, and deservedly so. Wii Sports was phenomenally successful when it landed on Western shores with the console last year. The fun may start to go out of the game after a few days, hours or even minutes, but for that brief period everyone who experiences it feels like they are in gaming nirvana. 6 awards seems fair compensation for that.
Xbox 360 owners will take some comfort from the fact that although most of their nominees were whup-assed by their Wii equivalent, the console did secure the big one, with Bioshock grabbing the best game award.
And then we come to the PS3, which had a poor night to say the least. When your brand spanking new console and it’s choice games can’t beat the eight year old PS2, something’s wrong. Sony actually walked away with more trophies than Microsoft but I doubt whether that will be much comfort.
The other thing this shows up is Sony’s short sightedness in removing backwards compatibility from the soon to be standard 40gb model of the PS3. These awards show that PS2 titles are still up there amongst the best the games industry has to offer, and people may still occasionally want to play them. Are you listening Sony? Nah, didn’t think so.
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