Capping off months of record-breaking sales,Animal Crossing: New Horizons,Pokemon Sword,andPokemon Shieldwon big at the Japan Game Awards. It’s worth noting that the games won awards that reflect both their impact on gaming as an industry, and their quality as games.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons,Pokemon Sword,andPokemon Shieldreceived their awards during the Tokyo Game Show (TGS), but that is no coincidence. The Japan Game Awards are conducted by CESA, the same organization that runs TGS. On top of traditional awards for quality, the awards focus on games that strengthened the game industry in some way. This could be through strong sales or a good reputation among consumers. The awards do not limit themselves to Japanese games,Call of Duty: Modern Warfarewon an award this year, but Nintendo’s flagship offerings had enough global impact to merit their awards.
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Animal Crossing: New Horizonswon three awards. Most importantly, it won the Grand Award for the game of the year, as well as an Award for Excellence. It also won The Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Award, which reflects how a game helped the industry to grow. Given thatAnimal Crossing: New Horizons captivated a huge number of players worldwide, it’s no surprise that it won this award.Pokemon SwordandPokemon Shieldalso won three awards: an Award for Excellence, the Global Award for Japanese Product (representing a Japanese game with a high global reputation), and the Best Sales Award (which reflects the highest-selling game in Japan for a given year).
It’s important to note that the Japan Game Awards cover games released between April 2019 and March 2020. AlthoughAnimal Crossing: New Horizonshas gone on to surpass the lifetime sales ofSwordandShield,the former released in March 2020. This did not give the game enough time to surpass thePokemongames by the end of March. Of course, the true winner in this regard is Nintendo as a whole, as theNintendo Switch remains in high demandyears after launch.
The twoPokemongames experienced some controversy at launch, as they do not allow players to import every Pokemon from previous games. Howver, it’s up fordebate whetherPokemon’s developers are at fault, or if it wasn’t a reasonable expectation.
Still, many millions of players have grown to love the latest installments in theAnimal CrossingandPokemongames. The awards focus on a global impact, and the hardcorePokemonfanbase only represents a very small piece of the player base. In that regard, the games richly deserve the awards that they have received.
