Game Critics Announce Best of E3 2006

Many outlets give out annual E3 awards, but de facto "official" Best of E3 honors are those bestowed by the Game Critics Awards, made up of judges from 37 publications and only awarded to games and other products that are playable by media in some form, even if in some cases that's behind closed doors. Last night, the organization announced the winners from E3 2006. By platform, PC came out on top with five wins. Wii followed with four, Xbox 360 with three, PlayStation 3 with two, and PS2 and DS with one each. On the publisher front, Nintendo took the lead with five wins, followed by Electronic Arts and Microsoft with three each. Best of show went to Nintendo's Wii console, which also took Best Hardware. Best Original Game went to Will Wright's Spore, which also took Best PC Game and Best Simulation Game, giving Spore the most wins for one product. Wii tied with Epic's Gears of War for the second-most number of wins for one product with two each; Gears of War took Best Console Game and Best Action game. Games which received one award include Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, Splash Damage's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Nintendo's Excite Truck, Harmonix's Guitar Hero 2, Ninja Theory's Heavenly Sword, BioWare's Mass Effect, Gas Powered Games' Supreme Commander, Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and Nintendo's Wii Sports.