Date: Friday, October 26, 2007
Wii Sports is Big Gaming BAFTA winner
The success of Nintendo’s innovative Wii system was confirmed once more at the second annual BAFTA gaming awards. The system’s Wii Sports game swept the board at the event, picking up six of fifteen awards.
Wii Sports is a virtual sports game, which allows users to utilise their motion sensitive Wii controllers for interactive play. As the BBC suggest, it is certainly a “new way of playing computer games” and the novelty of using your own controller as a golf club, bowling ball or tennis racquet certainly wasn’t lost on Wii users. The Wii console has earned a loyal army of fans since its release. Its release has helped to double profits at Nintendo in the six months prior to the end of September and demand for the consoles has so high, Nintendo have struggled with major supply problems. In fact, it is thought that it will be another year before the Wii becomes widely available.
The awards Wii Sports won at the event include best strategy and simulation game, best multi-player game, best sports title, best gameplay, most innovative game and best casual gaming experience. Unfortunately, they failed to pick up the most coveted gong, which was for best game and awarded to the PC and Xbox sci-fi thriller, Bioshock.
Sony’s newly released Playstation 3 (PS3) proved to be less successful than the Wii and embarrassingly, it failed to pick up any awards. However, the company didn’t leave empty handed, as they managed to pick up a couple of low-key awards for games on their less sophisticated Playstation 2 (PS2).
The BAFTA game awards are associated with the better-known BAFTA television and film ceremonies and aim to recognise great gaming talent. Chairperson, Hilary Bevan Jones believes it is important for the Academy to honour the games industry. She said: “Our role is to encourage creative excellence in the field, for the benefit of a rapidly growing audience.”
Sources
BBC
BBC
Times
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