Capping off months of record-breaking sales, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Pokemon Sword, and Pokemon Shield won 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, and Pokemon Shield received 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 Warfare won an award this year, but Nintendo’s flagship offerings had enough global impact to merit their awards.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons won 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 that Animal Crossing: New Horizons captivated a huge number of players worldwide, it’s no surprise that it won this award. Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield also 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. Although Animal Crossing: New Horizons has gone on to surpass the lifetime sales of Sword and Shield, the former released in March 2020. This did not give the game enough time to surpass the Pokemon games by the end of March. Of course, the true winner in this regard is Nintendo as a whole, as the Nintendo Switch remains in high demand years after launch.
The two Pokemon games experienced some controversy at launch, as they do not allow players to import every Pokemon from previous games. Howver, it’s up for debate whether Pokemon‘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 the Animal Crossing and Pokemon games. The awards focus on a global impact, and the hardcore Pokemon fanbase only represents a very small piece of the player base. In that regard, the games richly deserve the awards that they have received.
Source: Video Games Chronicle
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