Gears of war snatches eight AIAS awards

Mike Bantick
Saturday, 10 February 2007 03:45

Opinion and Analysis

Epic games have stormed the 10th annual Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awards night in Las Vegas.

Conducted as part of the Design. Innovate. Communicate. Entertain (DICE) summit 2007, the AIAS awards have been handed out to those companies willing to be part of the show. Capcom, the notable exception.

Without Capcom, you will see no awards to such excellent 2006 titles as Dead Rising or Okami, even Lost Planet - Extreme condition was a notable title deserving some attention.  So take the next pieces of information with the grain of salt they deserve.

Gears of war (a Xbox 360 exclusive) emerged from the award hoopla as the clear conqueror, claiming eight awards.  Nintendo's Wii sports came in a distant second grabbing three gongs.

Gears won overall game of the year pipping PC game of the year Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

The folk from Epic games were obviously elated at their success; in an interview with gamesindustry.biz Epic's CEO Michael Capps was full of bravado as well as praise for his team.
"This is incredible, getting sales is great, making the game we wanted and having people buy it and enjoy it is fantastic. But having our peers say it's the best game of the year? That's insane. We beat the Wii."

For a full list of the awards and winners, check out page 2