Microsoft and Ubisoft Dominate MCV 2011 Awards

A remarkable 60 companies from across the games industry are nominated for prizes at this year’s MCV Industry Excellence Awards in the UK, with Microsoft and Ubisoft leading the pack with 11 and nine finalist places respectively.

Considered the biggest event in the games industry calendar, every leading company will be represented at the awards on Thursday April 7th at the The Brewery, Chiswell Street, London, where 600 games retailers and executives with gather.

But who will win the big titles – not the industry-centric “independent retailer” awards, but things like New Game Brand, where Alan Wake, Bullet Storm and Kinect Sports are nominated, or even Best Use of Social Media where again Kinect is nominated alongside Just Cause 2/YouTube integration and Fable III’s Kingmaker app.

There are also awards for managing the best promotional campaign, with games such as Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Dead Space 2, Football Manager 2011 and Halo: Reach fighting it out on behalf of their respective PR teams.

Events like this might seem pretty irrelevant to gamers, but the this couldn’t be further from the truth; massive decisions are made that affect the future of the industry, choices that result in games being propped up to milk a bit more from them or discarded without any consideration of the potential impact on gamers – a case fans of Guitar Hero will all too readily understand.

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