Posts Tagged ‘awards’

The prestigious Gamer Critics Award group announced their E3 award winners today, and lo and behold, Rock Band 3 was one of the winners. The game was nominated for three awards across two categories: Best Social/Casual Game and Best Hardware. Rock Band 3 was awarded Best Social/Casual Game, but came up short in the Best Hardware category to the Nintendo 3DS.

Also of special note is that Harmonix’s new game Dance Central won two awards, as well. The new game won Best Original Game and Best Motion Simulation Game.

Congratulations, Harmonix! For anyone keeping track at home, Harmonix was tied with id Software for most awards by a single developer! Go here to see the full list of winners.

[Gamer Critics Awards]

June is coming to a close, and now that E3 is behind us, Rock Band 3 was officially a hit. Just a few of the accolades include:

• IGN’s “Best Music Game of E3 2010″
• Alternative Press’s “10 Must-Have Games from E3″
• Gamepro’s “Best of E3″
• PCWorld’s “E3 Awards and Accolades”

This morning we’ve learned that Rock Band 3 has been nominated for two “Best of E3 2010″ awards by Game Critics Awards, an independent group of 31 leading North American media outlets that cover the videogame industry. Out of everything else, THIS is the award you want to get! Rock Band 3 was nominated for Best Social/Casual Game, as well as nominated TWICE in the Best Hardware category (for RB3 Pro Guitars and RB3 Keyboards).

Hit up GameCriticsAwards for the full list of nominees. Winners will be announced on July 6th.

Want LOTS more E3 coverage of Rock Band3? Lead Designer Dan Teasdale has a HUGE list of E3 Rock Band 3 coverage over on his blog. After the jump are some videos from E3 that you may not have seen yet, so check ‘em out!

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One of my favorite business publications,Fast Company, announced their list of the Top 10 Innovative Companies by Industry this week, and guess who landed on it?  Joining the likes of industry heavy weights Apple, Microsoft, Infinity Ward, and Rockstar Games, Harmonix landed on the list at a healthy #7.

According to Fast Company…

With The Beatles: Rock Band, the creators of the musical video-game genre reached what could be considered its artistic pinnacle: great gameplay, amazing songs, and a focus on music history. The Beatles’ sales totaled 1.7 million units worldwide in 2009, relatively strong given the overall weakness in the music-video-game genre.

Congrats, Harmonix!

Bleep Bloop, an offshoot of College Humor that reviews and discusses video games, sat down with Andy Battaglia from the A.V. Club, to talk a little about their winner for game of the year, the Beatles: Rock Band.  They made an excellent point that I really never thought that much about until now, is that sure Modern Warfare 2 and Uncharted 2 are amazing games now, but only a few years down the road, they’ll be surpassed by the next iteration of their genre.  The Beatles: Rock Band is based on the music of the Beatles, who haven’t had a new album since the end of the ’60s!  This game isn’t going anywhere for a long time, and despite a few initial reservations they had when the game was first announced, once they were able to play it, their nerves were immediately put at ease, based on the intense amount of detail put into the game by Harmonix.

Check out the full video from them below, which intersperses their discussion with clips of the College Humor staff playing the game (with the sound removed).

Gaming industry blog Gamasutra.com today announced their Top 5 Game Developers of 2009.  Our personal favorite, Harmonix, was fortunate enought to find a place on this list!  The brief write-up extolls Harmonix for making a brilliant and unique band-centric game that was able to impress and innovate among a field of less impressive entries.  The boys and girls of Harmonix find themselves in good company among over developers Naughty Dog (Uncharted 2), Rocksteady Studios (Batman: Arkham Asylum), Runic Games (Torchlight), and Valve Software (Left 4 Dead 2).  Congrats to the fine folks over at Harmonix!

The nominees for this year’s Spike Video Game Awards have been announced, and you can help decide the winner’s by participating in the vote.  The Beatles: Rock Band is up for two awards: Best Music Game and Best Soundtrack.  For Best Music Game, I’m sorry, but Harmonix helped create this category with the original Guitar Hero, so even if you don’t like the Beatles, you owe it to vote for the game.  And for Best Soundtrack… look… I like heavy metal music. I was born in the late ’70s and raised in the early ’80s.  I freaked out when Tim Schafer read off the track listing for Brutal Legend (while simultaneously solving a Rubik’s Cube), but my loyalty lies with Rock Band.  Sorry, Brutal Legend.

So click the links I added above and get voting!