Video Games

PlayStation 30th Anniversary Partner Awards: Genshin Impact wins Excellence Award

Sony honors the performance of games made in Asia

Marco Wutz

Sony

Sony’s annual PlayStation Partner Awards focusing on Asia and Japan stand under the motto of the console’s 30th anniversary this year and the results for all categories – partly based on votes from the community and partly based on commercial performance – are in.

HoYoverse is once again a massive winner, grabbing victories with three titles: Genshin Impact won the Excellence Award, while Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero took Partner Awards. There was never much doubt about Genshin Impact’s victory, at least – after years of taking up one of the performance-based Grand Awards, Sony created the Excellence Award with rather specific victory conditions for this year’s honors to free up the slot booked by the juggernaut.

Whereas Grand Awards are given to the three top-performing titles created in Asia, the new Excellence Award is given to a single game created in Asia that had both commercial success and major cultural impact over a period of three years – and only one game fits that definition.

Speaking of the Grand Awards: FromSoftware took home one for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Square Enix took one for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and the Chinese developer Game Science won its first-ever prize at this event series with Black Myth: Wukong.

Aside from HSR and ZZZ, the other performance-based Partner Awards went to Nexon’s The First Descendant, Bandai Namco’s Tekken 8, Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma 2, Atlus’ Persona 3 Reload, and Sega’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.

Shift Up’s Stellar Blade and Koei Tecmo’s Rise of the Ronin won the Special Award, which is given to successful PS5 titles developed in collaboration with Sony – they’re essentially giving medals to themselves with this one.

Black Myth: Wukong, Stellar Blade, FF7 Rebirth, Rise of the Ronin, and Infinite Wealth won by vote in the Users’ Choice category.

Being a special edition of the annual awards that celebrates the 30th anniversary of PlayStation, Sony also let users vote on the Generations Awards, crowning one winner for each generation:

  • PS1: Final Fantasy 7
  • PS2: Final Fantasy 10
  • PSP: Monster Hunter Portable 3rd
  • PS3: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
  • PS Vita: Persona 4 Golden
  • PS4: Elden Ring

This year’s awards definitely emphasize that it’s been a good year for games from China and South Korea in addition to Japan – Asia’s games industry is clearly getting broader.

Published
Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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