Xbox 360 Gears Of War wins big at Golden Joysticks

The annual Golden Joystick awards were held at the Hilton Hotel in London, celebrating it’s 25th year of highlighting the best games in the business. The big winner was Gears Of War on the Xbox 360, which won four awards, including the coveted Ultimate Game Of The Year.

Other big winners included Guitar Hero II and Nintendo. The awards were much more evenly split this time than in last week’s BAFTA awards, where the Nintendo Wii and especially Wii Sports, trounced all comers.

Unlike the industry only Game Baftas, the Golden Joystick awards are voted for by members of the public, and almost 750,000 votes were cast.

The full list of winners is:

The Bliss Girls’ Choice Game of the Year 2007: Guitar Hero II
The Sun Family Game of the Year 2007: Wii Sports
The Games Radar Handheld Game of the Year 2007: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
The 4Talent Mobile Game of the Year 2007: Final Fantasy
The T3 Innovation of the Year 2007: Nintendo Wii
The BBC 1Xtra Soundtrack of the Year 2007: Guitar Hero II
The Nuts All-Nighter award 2007: Gears of War
The GameTribe Online Game of the Year 2007: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
The Next-Gen.biz UK Developer of the Year 2007: Codemasters
The Total Film One to Watch 2007: Assassin’s Creed
The Vivendi Retailer of the Year 2007: Game
Publisher of the Year 2007 – sponsored by Future: Nintendo
Editor’s Choice Award 2007: Gears of War
Official Nintendo Magazine’s Nintendo Game of the Year 2007: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Official Playstation Magazine’s PlayStation Game of the Year 200: God of War II
The PC Gamer PC Game of the Year 2007: The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
The Sonopress Xbox Game of the Year 2007: Gears of War
The 02 Ultimate Game of the Year 2007: Gears of War

So the overhyped Gears Of War came out on top, which is hardly surprising going on the number of Xbox 360 owners in the UK, all of whom seemed to scoop up a copy of the game when it came out. The hype was definitely overplayed, and a number of factors contributed to it’s success, none more so than the excellent advert featuring Gary Jules version of Mad World.

But the fact remains that it was one of the first true next gen games of this generation, and maybe proved to the doubters holding on to their Xboxes and PS2s that the games industry has moved on, even if a lot of consumers are so far refusing to.

Again, the PS2 beat the PS3 where it counted, with God Of War II on the console being voted the best Playstation game of the year. Surely one day the PS3 is going to start proving it’s worth and providing games better than their PS2 alternatives.

And then there was the Wii, once again proving it’s popularity amongst today’s casual gamers. The Nintendo deservedly won Innovation Of The Year, although I have my doubts about Nintendo being named as Publisher Of The Year.

• Wii wins big at game BAFTAs against PS3 and Xbox 360
• Gears of War 2 snubbed at DICE AIAS awards
• Gears of War 2007 Global Xbox LIVE Tournament
• Gears Of War 2 on Xbox 360 – Just another shooter?
• Round Up – Wii is casual but wins big, Ps3 gets universal criticism