Morning Discussion: New Year's Eve

Good morning and welcome to this last day of 2010. Today also closes out our Best of 2010 Awards with the naming of the Game of the Year. It won't be much of a revelation to those who've been following along this week, but that's sort of the nature of these things. The game that takes home the top prize usually also takes the awards for any categories in which it's nominated.

That situation led to what's turned out to be a controversial decision with our awards. To open up the fields and better recognize the breadth of great games this year, I suggested we separate the console platforms. In this generation, "exclusives" are thought of in terms of whether they are on PS3 or 360, and multiplatform developed for both. So that's how the awards are broken up. As part of that, Mass Effect 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction received consideration as 360 "exclusive" games though they also appear on PC.

Some have inferred from this that PC isn't being taken seriously. This is not the case. The method of dividing up the titles merely reflects the competitive landscape of the video game industry. However, to be completely up front, it was an oversight not to include Mass Effect 2 in the PC category nominations. We have a lot of exciting games to look forward to in 2011 and regardless of what you play them on--PC, 360, PS3, Wii, DS, 3DS, PSP, iPhone, Android, or whatever--Shacknews will be in the thick of them, playing everything we can get our hands on and telling you about them.