SCEA Announces PlayStation Network Gamers’ Choice Awards

The PlayStation Network is home to many top-quality downloadable productions, and it's time the users rewarded those hard-working publishers.

Today, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) has announced the PlayStation Network Gamers' Choice Awards 2011, which is designed to recognize the very best titles on the PSN across four distinct categories.

Between February 22 and March 1, users will vote for their favorite game in each of those categories and the winners will be announced the following week on March 7. Those that are recognized as the best of the best will enter the PlayStation Store Spring Fever sale, where regular members can get them for 30% off and Plus members get 50% off. Five games have been nominated in each category; those nominees were chosen based on the highest-rated user scores on the PSN, and they are as follows:

Best PS3 Downloadable Game

Best PSP Downloadable Game

Best PS3/PSP MINI

Best PlayStation Network Exclusive Game

For the record, they intend to make this an annual thing, so all the games nominated came out in 2010. When the Awards roll around next year, that'll be for all titles released in 2011. Also, we spoke with PlayStation Network Director of Marketing Brandon Stander yesterday, before all this became public, and we have some additional coverage for you thanks to his comments:

"This is an opportunity for us to feature publishers who have created great content, and have made the favorites among our audience. It gives the users a chance to pick their favorite games and have the best face off against each other.

It's especially nice because there's such a breadth of entertainment options available on the PSN, and it's great to have users reward the best and brightest."

He also said that Sony will be open to feedback and suggestions from the community, so this Award formula isn't written in stone. In the future, maybe we'll see a longer voting period, more categories, more games in each category, etc. For now, though, we think it's a great addition to the PSN and gives users a fantastic way to "give back;" a lot of top publishers certainly deserve recognition.

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