Zelda: Breath Of The Wild And Pokémon GO Win At The Game Awards 2016

Pokken tournament v street fighter V

Come on everyone saw this coming.

Overwatch won game of the year...? Ech

@Gorlokk Well it did basically take almost the entire gaming world by storm.

@jswhitfield8 For that reason I honestly think Pokken should have won. SF5 while a good game was half baked and needed more development time. Honestly it should have been a 2017 release and finished

Didn't Zelda win that award last year? Pokémon GO was a no brainer for those awards. Not picking a winner for best fan game is really dumb, especially considering all of the good fan games this year.

Zelda: BOTW won the most anticipated game award because of fan votes and Pokemon GO had very little if anything to do with Nintendo. So ya, successful night all round.

Why was Pokemon Sun and Moon not even a nomination?
Anyway, mostly a sad year to watch as a Nintendo fan. Mostly a show about every other system out there due to not much coming out this year. Still, winning absolutely nothing besides most anticipated game? Does seem a little odd.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE "Pokemon GO had very little if anything to do with Nintendo"

Thank you. I really don't understand how licensing your IP out to another company to make a game out of it is a win for Nintendo, who made Miitomo. I know most Pokémon games are made by Gamefreak, not Nintendo, but Nintendo and/or TPC are hiring them to make a game for them. From everything I understand about Go Niantic asked for a Pokémon license to slap a skin on their previous game. Might as well say every time Mine craft wins an award Nintendo won it b/c of those Mario skins.

The only difference between Eureka and AM2R is Niantic paid somebody, probably TPC, for the license, the other 2 didn't. Pokémon Go is paid for fan art.

Edit: Next year when SMR wins the handheld award that will count as a win for Nintendo as Miyamoto does his Apple infomercials selling his game. Maybe Nintendo can win the "Best 3rd party game" award as well.

It wasn't even Witcher 3 that won Best RPG, it was Witcher 3 DLC.

I do think some games get robbed by grouping handheld and mobile together, they're different beasts entirely.

The fighting mechanics in Street Fighter V are a lot tighter than pokken. Pokken is an excellent game, but frankly has as many characters and modes as sfv did at launch. With the free updates alone, sfv is now far superior, but the underlying gameplay will always make other fighting game developers jealous.

@rjejr Pokémon is owned by Nintendo (TPC) and they would have overseen production. Remember the news story of Iwata working on Pokémon Go on his sick bed? It's as much a Nintendo game as Hyrule Warriors or Other M.

I personally don't think that Pokémon GO deserved to win ''the BEST game'' of anything.

King of Fighters XIV should have beaten both Pokken Tournament and SFV.

@EllenJMiller Exactly.
And the fact that a buggy half-finished mess of a game that got by on Pokemon hype alone won while other, much more polished, actually finished games didn't just shows the lack of credibility on display here.

Xenoblade Chronicles X was nominated? But that released in 2015...?

Most of these games seem like fair winners. SFV is slightly surprising due to the buggy launch, though I don't know how great it is now.

Where are those special offers? That's the only thing I care about this.

@CB85 I was released after the November 26th cutoff date...

I wonder if Pokémon Sun &a Moon will be added next year.

All in all, the show was pretty good. BotW trailer & gameplay, Konkani shaming, that Dead Rising trailer, and that speech by the dev of My Dragon, Cancer.

I do think there should be more awards for the show. How about:

Greatest Disappointment

Best Evergreen Game from Last Year

Best Mobile Game (iPhone, Android)

Best Handheld Game (3DS, Vita)

Best Platorm Exclusive Game

Was Terrible Fate not nominated for Best Fan Creation?

@Clownshoes "breath of the wild won biggest disappointment"

Ha, that's a good one... You're right about the score one (not about the others).

@allav866 It probably came out too late.

@Mogster Nintendo (TPC)

You do know that's 2 different companies, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pok%C3%A9mon_Company

Nintendo holds the "trademark", TPC handles copyright.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/differences-between-copyright-trademark-3218.html

@Damo - don't let Iwata's passing put rose colored glasses on his involvement w/ Go. Here's what the guy who actually made the game said abut Iwata's involvement, which sounds more like a cheerleader than an active participant. If you want to say the Dallas Cowboys win a lot of games b/c of their cheerleaders, that's fine, but the players might disagree. I took the liberty of bolding the important part for you b/c it's a lot to read.

_______________________________________

I was surprised at E3 when showing Pokémon Go, that Miyamoto was on-stage, clearly excited about the game. As an outsider, I assumed he wouldn't be involved in Pokémon Go. Have you talked to Miyamoto? Have you gotten feedback from him, especially following the launch?

Well, I haven’t talked to Miyamoto-san post-launch, but certainly we’ve been in touch with Nintendo and Miyamoto. He was on-stage with us when we announced the project, it had been under development for some time, but he was onstage when we publicly announced it in Japan back in September of last year. So, it’s definitely something that he’s been aware of and has provided his perspective on.

He’s been giving feedback through the course of development? It seems like something he’s excited about. Would you say that’s true?

I don’t want speak for Mr. Miyamoto. I have a huge amount of respect for him, so I don't want to put words in his mouth. I hope he likes our game. He is aware of it and we have gotten feedback from him. At the same time, he’s not been involved as a producer or game designer, he’s not been hands-on in that way. I was very, very honored to be on stage with him whenever we did our initial announcement and had the opportunity to hang out with him, talk about games, and bluegrass music. It turns out he’s a big bluegrass music fan. He plays the banjo. Very interesting guy.

The interview is worth a read. It's Niantic's game. Well it's Niantic's game Ingress w/ a Pokemon skin on it and a lot of guys at TPC and Ntineod cheering them on. I'm a Cowboys fan and a Cowboys cheerleader fan from way back in the 70's, but they're 2 different groups of people.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2016/07/11/pokemon-go-team-discusses-successes-challenges-and-the-future-niantic.aspx

@SLIGEACH_EIRE Since you started this you might as well keep playing along.

So basically, what I saw was "if its popular, it will most likely win" fates deserved an award.

@allav866 that's not a game.

@Aaron09 It's a fan creation. Egoraptor's Zelda Rap got nominated a couple years ago, and that's not a game.

Pokemon Go beating Generations....this is why I stopped caring for these shows.

I knew the Witcher 3 would win (even if it was DLC) but I had hoped Xenoblade would cause an upset.

Guess people prefer to be free to digitally boink someone than pilot a giant robot. Strange cos it's really not that hard to do the former in real life. 😅

No winner picked in controversial "Best Fan Creation" category

And whose fault is that?

I feel like merging the handheld console and mobile categories is a cop out to give a free overall Handheld category win to Pokemon Go (instead of just a Mobile category win), while denying another project their win. Gaming publications of the past which ran their own awards features would have never done a merger like that. They would have had separate categories between the two. So I question the validity of this particular venue on their bracket decision making.

Monster Hunter Generations would have been a good pick for Best Handheld Console Game of the Year. Normally, I would have picked the Fire Emblem title, but Nintendo's handling/splitting of Fates (and the poor writing/storyboard decisions) holds it back from GOTY status.

Having a "Most Anticipated" Award is really stupid. They should only be giving awards to projects that have already been completed and proven themselves. We haven't even seen a steady stream of gameplay showcases for Breath of the Wild, like Nintendo used to provide years ahead of time for games like Ocarina of Time. Giving an honorable mention in some capacity to BotW isn't a bad thing, but we shouldn't recognize it as winning anything just yet. Maybe next year.

The Witcher 3 is a very deserving title for Best RPG of the Year, so kudos to ProjektRED on another job very well done! It is overall the better game/story compared to Xenoblade X. The original Xenoblade was much better than Xenoblade X, and was a stronger contender for it's time. I would say the original Xenoblade was the better winning choice between it and The Witcher 2, in a 2011 EU match up.

Overwatch is highly overrated. I don't think it's a good pick for Game of the Year. It just feels like it got picked because it's popular, and it's a Blizzard title, instead of being picked based on it's particular merits (or lack thereof).

The Family Game category in this case was essentially comprised of a mishmash of different titles that didn't resemble anything like Mario Party or Wii Sports/Resort. (Which is what would traditionally be considered a "Family Game.") I don't think any of the titles they nominated were even necessarily valid for the category. I don't think Pokemon Go is a good winning pick, because the Family genre is supposed to be about an immediate multiplayer experience where people directly interact with each other. Pokemon Go definitely does that to some degree, but the reality is that players often pay more attention to their phones than to other people, or even the environments that they're supposed to be exploring. That's the opposite intended result of a Family Game experience.

Street Fighter V reeks of being chosen as the winner for being by far the most popular fighting game of the year. King of Fighters 2016 would have been a good winning pick based on comparison of merits. Killer Instinct shouldn't even be a nominee, because it was released in 2014. There's no "Best DLC Season" Award, which in itself could be it's own category. Handling it this way is yet another example of the poor bracketing decisions of this venue.

@Clownshoes That would actually go to Persona 5 which was supposed to come out 1 year before Zelda and has been pushed back further than Zelda.

@Joeynator3000 Pokemon Generations wasn't a game? or is there some Mobile game called Generations that I'm not aware of?

frame haters incoming

I've put an unholy amount of hours into class-shooters so I can agree with Overwatch as GOTY, its pretty much everything I wanted out of a game. Titanfall was amazing too this year, tough choice. Zelda trailers were cool, showing of more interesting locations rather than generic open world plains made the game look way better.

@DrRandle Monster Hunter.

Pokemon Go is more of a phenomenon, but is it really a better game than Fire Emblem Fates or Monster Hunter Generations? Certainly not as far as I'm concerned.

@Damo "complete freedom to do as they wanted"

Oh come on, we both know your smarter than that, that's a bogus argument and you know it. Nobody is going to license their IP to anybody w/ no strings attached, but there is a huge gulf between people doing work and people OKing your work after it is done. Niantic already had Ingress up and running as a full and complete game on it's servers. They slapped a Pokemon skin on it. Did TPC just give them Pokemon and say - "Have at it." - of course not. Nintendo is very tight, they probably had to give approval or denial to everything Niantic was doing on a nearly daily basis. Maybe only weekly. But having Niantic employees putting a skin on an already existing game, and then TPC saying, yes, that's ok, we'll allow it, or saying "heck no, take that out" isn't the same as Ninteod making the game. Not even close. Iwata laying in bed looking at dailies saying, "Oh, yes, that's very nice." hardly makes him involved w/ the creative process.

I'll give you this, Niantic coming up w/ ideas that TPC or Nintendo nixed - I'm sure there were a few - does affect what isn't in the game, but Niantic is still doing all the work that's in the game, not Nintendo.

I do compeltly understand your point about people knocking Nintneod for something good that has happened to their IP, and therefore them. (Mario at the end of that Olmpics infomercial was assume too.) Whether Nintendo had anything to do w/ Go or not it was still great exposure for them b/c 98% of people probably think they made it anyway. And it did make them some money. And they got more exposure for S&M, those records are proof. So it's a win, a huge win. But it shows that Ninteod can make a lot of money by licensing out their IP, not that they made a great mobile game, b/c they didn't make it. Pointing that out isn't being negative, it's being factual. My bringing up Miitomo earlier, that was me be negative unnecessarily.

@Damo Short version - "The Game Awards" aren't for who got the most exposure and the most adulation for marketing their IP, The Game Awards are for people who made the games. And Kojima for getting fired. Ninatic made the game, they won the award, it was their night. The other 364 nights out of the year Nintendo wins 99% more from Pokemon Go than Niantic does, nobody cares about them. Let's give them their due for 1 measly night.

I don't like the fact that the mobile and handheld games are thrown in the same category. They aren't exactly similar are they? Apart from being portable...I wonder if Switch games could qualify for handheld next year?

@Nintendo_Ninja
No, that award was won by No Man's Sky. And we all know how that turned out. XD

@Mogster Nintendo owns only 1/3 of Pokemon. Creatures Inc owns 1/3 and Game Freak owns slightly more.

@rjejr Good work, fighting the good fight and all. (Although that one post talks about Miyamoto, not Iwata. Iwata probably did "work" on Pokemon Go... using a rubber stamp. )

I was there at the Microsoft theater, I had fun but wasn't a fan of how they focused on music and trailers more than actual awards. There also wasn't anything special for those who went there in person, there's no merchandise for the show and no opportunities to meet anyone that went on stage. The benefit is just being there in person. I was hoping to get to meet Reggie there, but I might've expected too much. Oh well, I might stay home and watch it next year if there's no incenitive to watch it at the theater.

@PlywoodStick Yeah, I'm the ingenious gentleman Don rjejr of NintendoLife. And the windmills are wearing me out this morning something awful.

@Damo What I find more amusing is that those people refusing to accept Nintendo's involvement in a successful product, are active users on a Nintendo fan site. I might never get their logic.

Apart from extending the life of the article with more comments, I don't think replying to this guys is even worth it.

Don't get why Witcher 3 won, since it's older of a game. Kind of knew Pokemon Go would win, just because of how many people downloaded. Kind of surprised about Zelda, since it didn't even come out yet...I would have thought it would win next year, but glad it did, it gives more hype for the game! One game that I was surprised didn't win (and maybe it did and I didn't see it) was Uncharted 4, as that was a great adventure title! Love how people put down nintendo, but they always have the games that win!!!! Go Nintendo!!!!

@JLPick Uncharted 4 won two prices (Best narrative and performance). I was little surprised that Titanfall 2 and BF1 didn't win anything.

@rjejr Nah! My work here is done. I took the pin out of the grenade. That's enough.

@Joeynator3000 Ohhhh, right right right. That's fair.

@JLPick The original Witcher 3 did release in 2015, however, the Blood and Wine expansion released this year. The GOTY edition also released this year, which compiled together the original game, the Hearts of Stone expansion, and Blood and Wine.

Thus, Witcher 3 won this year based on it's expansions, which are traditionally considered separate games from the original product. This is different from DLC or a DLC Season, which are just minor extensions of the same product. The pack for both expansions, without getting the whole GOTY edition, is even called an "Expansion Pass" instead of a "Season Pass" to highlight the point. Killer Instinct Season 3 is an example of a DLC Season, not an expansion, and should have been excluded from the Fighting genre entries for that reason. (Unless a "Best DLC/Season of the Year" award section is made, in which case it would be an appropriate entry.)

@FX102A An expansion is not the same thing as DLC. The lines have been blurred because of the digital market which exists today, but there is a significant difference: an expansion is a new game which continues off from the original, while DLC is merely a minor extension of the original game. For example, Blood and Wine is an expansion (which the GOTY edition compiled with the original and Hearts of Stone), while Killer Instinct Season 3 is DLC (minor extras for a 2 year old game).

@Billsama It's not a Nintendo "fan" site, it's 1 part of a larger network of sites covering all of video games. A fan site is a hobby by a guy in his spare time who isn't paid to do it. This site has been around for many years and does a very good job of covering all of the news related to Nintendo. I don't think any fan site would spend as much time covering the stock price as this one does.

As to what guys like Slig and I are doing here, well he can speak for himself, but over the past 15 years I've owned the Gamecube, Wii and Wii U and will probably end up owning a Switch. My kids have each owned a DSi and 3DS, my wife a 3DS. If you think that after all that time and products I can't be a fan yet critique something or point to information that I feel may be incorrect, well I don't understand that logic. I'm a fan, not a fool.

Overwatch being GotY is a joke. Mobile should be a seperate category from handheld. Witcher 3 is outstanding and so is XCX. They are amazing for different reasons. No qualms here.

I haven't played SV5 yet, but the criticism of lack of content can also be applied to Pokken Tournament. At least the former is still getting content while Pokken players are screwed unless they are playing on arcade.

Anyway, I'm still shocked about Overwatch being Goty. I mean, it's not bad but it's nothing special really. I wonder if money was involved in that decision

Why does anyone pretend to care about the Game Awards? The only thing more useless than an awards show is people's opinion of awards shows.

I laughed when Peter Moore walked over to Boogie so he wouldnt have to go to the stage

@G-Boy "frame haters incoming"

Imagine being stuck with them at a party. No wait a sec, nobody would actually invite them.

Darn, I missed the show. Was it good? Anyways, I heard Overwatch won GOTY, which makes me happy as it's one of the few games from this generation that actually met and surpassed my expectations. Normally I have a game that I anticipate a lot, play it, forget about it and move on. Overwatch, however, I'm still playing and it's only natural since it's taking after one of my favorite games of all time, Team Fortress 2. Congrats Blizz!

The acceptance speech by the developer of That Dragon, Cancer, was the highlight of the night for me, because it shows how much more than simple gaming our hobby can be. The strength that man showed, keeping his composure on stage, is perhaps more than I could've mustered.

It also served as a reminder for me to appreciate all the good things in my life, that I too often take for granted.

@CB85 It missed last years game awards being released after the deadline, qualifying it for this year.

Most of the winners are fine. But Pokémon Go as best Family game is questionable at best.

@PlywoodStick At least overwatch is well made and deserves some sort of reward, unlike Pokémon Go.

BLIZZARD BIAS ENDS

Overwatch is a decent shooter, but they added 2 characters and maybe 3 maps as free DLC now. Compared to WoW's expansions, it just does not seem complete.