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COLOGNE, GERMANY -- Gamescom 2011 is in full swing at the Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany. Considered to be the world’s largest games event, Gamescom is often the venue for major announcements and unveilings, such as the PS3 Slim and the XBOX Live Marketplace.
With close to 5,000 journalists covering the event, bringing home a win at Gamescom almost guarantees a game or console the necessary media coverage it needs to be a big success.
This year, Electronic Arts (EA) and Sony are dominating the awards with EA’s Battlefield 3 taking home the Best of Gamescom award, and Sony’s beautifully designed Playstation Vita winning Best Hardware or Hardware Accessory.
For online gamers, a new category emerged this year: Best Browser Game, which also went to EA with The SIMS Social. The SIMS narrowly beat out Ubisoft’s The Settlers Online. As expected, BioWare took home The Best Online award with the highly anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Some of this year’s upsets included FIFA 12 beating out Batman: Arkham City for Best Console Game, Uncharted: Golden Abyss edging out Mario Kart 3D for the mobile game award and Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster being crowned as the Best Family Gam” over the sequel to the wildly popular Kinect Sports and always-favorite offering from the Rayman series, Rayman Origins.
There’s still plenty of Gamescom left for big announcements and unexpected media darlings, but if it ended today, gamers would already have plenty of anticipation material to mull over before the showcased games are ready for distribution.
