The award winners of the Japan Game Awards 2020 were announced today by CESA, the organizer of Tokyo Game Show. Pokémon Sword and Shield won two awards, while Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare got one award each.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the first to be awarded. it received the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Award, which is given to an individual or a group of people that contributed to building the console game industry, in this case, the developers team.
The Global Award for Japanese Product was next with Pokémon Sword and Shield receiving the award, while Call of Duty: Modern Warfare received the Global Award for Foreign Product.
There are two Global Awards, one for a Japanese title and one for a foreign game. These awards are given to games that gained a good reputation in the international market in 2019.
Pokémon Sword and Shield also got the Best Sales Award. It was the most sold game between April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020. The eighth generation of the franchise was only released on November 15, though, selling 17.37 million copies.
Dragon Quest Walk, a mobile game similar to Pokémon Go based on the Dragon Quest series, won the Special Award, which is granted by recommendations from the awards’ nomination committee.
The Game Designers Award is decided by a panel of top Japanese game creators led by Masahiro Sakurai of Super Smash Bros fame. There were 10 games nominated for the Game Designers Award like Heavy Rain, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Life is Strange and Inside.
The panel took into consideration the uniqueness of the games to make the decision. In the end, there were four games the final nomination list: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Gnosis, Outer Wilds, and Baba Is You.
Baba Is You received the award. It’s a Finnish puzzle game with an innovative object rule manipulation system that is currently available on PCs and Nintendo Switch.
Tomorrow there’ll be another set of awards on Sept, 27. A total of 10 games will win Awards for Excellence, and one of them will be awarded the highest Grand Award.
While CESA had also been giving Future Awards to upcoming games, such awards will not be given this year due to the lack of physical demos from the cancellation of the physical TGS event.
The awards have been handed out since 1996 and Nintendo has dominated the Global Award since the category was created in 2012 with the Pokémon franchise, Animal Corssing : New Leaf, Super Smash Bros, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
