PlayStation says ‘thanks for making us money, guys’ with its 30th anniversary Partner Awards

Since getting into the video game awards beat with GOTY Watch this year, I’ve been learning about all sorts of obscure, back-slapping awards events from around the video game industry — like last week’s TIGA Awards, handed out by the U.K. game industry’s trade body (Best Legal Services 2024: Lee & Thompson LLP). But the strangest by far are the PlayStation Partner Awards for the Japan/Asia region — special 30th anniversary edition.

The PlayStation Partner Awards are not voted on by the public (with one exception), critics, or industry bodies. They are handed out by Sony. And while most of the games being honored are good, that seems to be just a happy accident, because these awards are not about quality — or not only, anyway.

The top Excellence Award goes to the “title developed in the Japan/Asia region that have had a consistent and significant impact along with commercial success over the past three years.” This year, that’s Genshin Impact.

Runners-up get the Grand Award, for “the top three titles developed in the Japan and Asia regions with the highest worldwide sales between October 2023 and September 2024.” Take a bow, Black Myth: Wukong, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

There’s room for more of PlayStation’s third-party friends across Asia to pick up some gongs though, thanks to the Partner Award for games with “top-ranked worldwide sales” and “particularly noteworthy accomplishments”: games like Dragon’s Dogma 2, Tekken 8, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Honkai: Star Rail.

The Special Award for “PS5 titles developed in collaboration with [Sony]” is literally a prize for having a game published by Sony. Well done, Rise of the Ronin and Stellar Blade!

Even the fan-voted Users’ Choice award is a bit weird, because the winners were chosen from a list of the 30 titles with the longest total gameplay time. Sony sure loves metrics. (I wonder if this is how The Game Awards put its own Players’ Choice nominee list together?)

The special 30th anniversary PlayStation Generations Awards, with one handed out per console generation, appear to be thank-yous to third-parties for making PlayStation exclusives like Final Fantasy 7 and Metal Gear Solid 4. (Square Enix was honored twice here, despite loudly vocalising its regret at making Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth a PlayStation exclusive.) The one exception — PlayStation 4 Generations winner Elden Ring — goes to FromSoftware, which Sony is reportedly trying to buy. Nothing like keeping it in the family.

I hope Sony and its Japan/Asia partners had a lovely evening celebrating their mutual success. And for the rest of us, there’s one significant upside, too: Genshin Impact developer HoYoverse’s thank-you note is accompanied by a photo of the team’s resident cat, a very handsome tabby. Look!