The highly prestigious end-of-year gaming awards take place on December 8 and Sony Santa Monica’s new Norse mythology adventure leads the way with ten nominations – including Game of the Year, Game Direction and Best Narrative. Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West also feature in the top categories, while the sleeper hit Stray (6 nominations), A Plague Tale: Requiem (5) and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (3) feature in amongst the most-nominated games.
As for Game of the Year, the six shortlisted games are:
A Plague Tale: RequiemElden RingGod of War RagnarokHorizon Forbidden WestStrayXenoblade Chronicles 3
You can watch the full nomination announcement stream below and begin voting for your favourites in The Game Awards here. The announcement tells the story of 2022 for console gamers especially, who haven’t had much in the way of massive original releases to choose from – especially on the Xbox side of things. The PS5 clearly had the better year, with two of the best games nominated here exclusive to the platform and created in-house by Sony. A third nominee Stray – which sees gamers embark on an adventure as a stray cat, is only available on PS5 and PC with an Xbox release still thought to be in the works. A Plague Tale: Requiem is available on both Xbox and PlayStation platforms, as is Elden Ring. Meanwhile, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is only available on the Nintendo Switch. So, to surmise, only two of the year’s six best games, can be played on Xbox Series S or Series X. By its own admission, Microsoft has had a down year, but is promising that will change in 2023 with Stafield, Redfall and Forza Motorsport.
