A report today from Jesse Divnich at the simExchange says Nintendo has turned casual games and gamers into the primary forces driving the videogame industry. Using data from the holiday 2007 shopping season, the firm said that one factor in the industry's growth has been a larger-than-expected next-generation adoption rate among casual gamers. (GameDaily, 01/09/08)
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Jan. 2, 2008 -- MSNBC tallied in their Game of the Year readers' votes between December 19 and 27. "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" garnered 33 percent of the over 17,000 votes and is MSNBC Readers' Game of the Year. The runner-up was "Bioshock" at 22 percent of the votes. The second runner-up was "Mass Effect" at 10 percent.

Here are MSNBC readers' picks for the best in each genre:

¿ Best sports game: Madden NFL '08
¿ Best racing game: Project Gotham Racing 4
¿ Best casual game: Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
¿ Best family game: LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
¿ Best music game: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
¿ Best handheld game: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
¿ Best role-playing game: Mass Effect
¿ Best action/adventure game: Bioshock
¿ Best shooter: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

View the full report for the runners-up in each category.
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Kotaku announces the winners of Reader's Choice GOTY for the DS, PC, PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360, XBLA, PSN, and Overall. (Mon Dec 31 2007)
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Here are the winners and runners-up for all the categories:

Game of the Year: BioShock
Runners-up: Rock Band, Mass Effect, Super Mario Galaxy, The Orange Box

Most Innovative: Rock Band
Runners-up: Portal, Assassin's Creed, Crush, Super Paper Mario

Best Writing: Mass Effect
Runners-up: BioShock, Portal, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Best Adrenaline Rush: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Runners-up: God of War II, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Project Gotham Racing 4, Halo 3

Best Jiggle Factor: Heavenly Sword
Runners-up: Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Conan, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary

Guiltiest Pleasure: LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Runners-up: Stranglehold, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, Overlord, Mario Strikers Charged

Best Portable Game: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Runners-up: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow, Silent Hill: Origins, Dead Head Fred

Worst Game: Vampire Rain
Runners-up: Jackass: The Game, Lair, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, The Eye of Judgment, Hour of Victory

[ Judges: Scott Alexander, Damon Brown, John Gaudiosi, Scott Jones, Marc Saltzman, Scott Stein and Scott Steinberg ]
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Kotaku's Brian Crecente writes:

"Our first-ever Game of the Year awards was a pretty straight forward deal. I asked all of the writers to submit a list of three games for each category and the three that showed up most in each category made it as a finalist. Once we had the list of finalists I asked each writer to go through and order the finalists and then tallied the vote. The one with the most points was named Game of the Year, the runner-up was named Not Quite Game of the Year. The game with the most votes for Worst Game of the Year received that dubious honor."

Super Mario Galaxy won Kotaku's Overall Game of the Year award. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune came as second, it won the Not Quite Game of the Year award. (Kotaku posted the overall results as a separate post, see the link at the Alternative Sources below for more details.)
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Provided below via the source link is IGN entire list of individual platform picks for Best of 2007. Here are selected categories and winners:

¿ PC Game of the Year -- BioShock
¿ PS2 Game of the Year -- God of War II
¿ PS3 Game of the Year -- Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
¿ Best PlayStation Store Game -- Super Stardust HD
¿ PSP Game of the Year -- Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow
¿ Xbox 360 Game of the Year -- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
¿ Best Xbox Live Arcade Game -- Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
¿ Wii Game of the Year -- Super Mario Galaxy
¿ DS Game of the Year -- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
¿ Wireless Game of the Year -- Digital Chocolate Cafe

For each applicable platform, IGN also picks the Best Action Game, Best Adventure Game, Best Expansion, Best Fighting Game, Best First-Person Shooter, Best Music Game, Best Persistent World Game, Best Platform Game, Best Puzzle Game, Best Racing/Driving Game, Best RPG, Best Simulation, Best Sports Game, Best Strategy Game, Best Graphics Technology, Best Artistic Design, Best Original Score, Best Licensed Soundtrack, Best End Credit Song, Best Use of Sound, Best Story, Best Local Multiplayer Game, Best Online Multiplayer Game, Best Downloadable Content, Most Innovative Design, Best Use of the Wii-Mote, Best Game No One Played, Best Revival, Biggest Surprise, and Best Developer.

IGN Best of 2007 Awards also feature gaming and non-gaming categories in Movies, TV, DVD (includes HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs), Music, Comics, Gears, Sports, and Stars. Of those categories, the gaming-related winners are:

¿ Best Videogame Adaptation (Movies) -- Hitman
¿ Best Videogame Soundtrack/Score (Music) -- Super Mario Galaxy Soundtrack
¿ Best Best PC Peripheral (Gears) -- Novint Falcon
¿ Best Console Peripheral (Gears) -- Rock Band: Special Edition
¿ Best HDTV (Gears) -- Pioneer Project Kuro Plasm...
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MSNBC video game section has been polling gamers about their favorite games in a number of categories, trying to narrow down the search for the Game of the Year.

On Thursday the site put up the poll to decide which of the finalists, culled from the best of each genre, should be named the game of the year.

The finalists are:
¿ Madden NFL 08
¿ Project Gotham Racing 4
¿ Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
¿ LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
¿ Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
¿ The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
¿ Mass Effect
¿ Bioshock
¿ Call of Duty 4

At the time of this writing Call of Duty 4 was leading with 31 percent of the vote. BioShock was close behind with 22 percent and Mass Effect was in a distant third with 8.6 percent.

[ Words: Kotaku's Brian Crecente ]
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1UP - Brian Gray, 12/19/2007:

As the last of 2007 creeps away, Japanese gaming mag Weekly Famitsu asked 280 users and 63 stores to sum up the game industry this year, publishing the first part of the questionnaire's results in this week's issue. A summary of the results is as follows.
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This week's top rental charts from U.S. game rental company GameFly, representing the most requested games for the week ending December 3rd, highlight both to-be-released and already released games in a unique demand-specific chart.

This week's top five all-platform requests show little movement once again, after last week saw the list barely ruffled. Assassin's Creed still takes the top spot for a third week with Mass Effect in second for its second week in a row.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which spent the last two weeks at number four, slips a bit to the fourth spot to make room for Kane and Lynch: Dead Men to move up one spot into the fourth spot, but that's the only movement -- Uncharted: Drake's Fortune stays at number five, where it entered last week.
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The Chanticleer's Art & Entertainment editor Toni Merriss picks her ten best games of 2007.
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