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The story
The Game of the Year nominees for the US gaming awards show “The Game Awards” (TGA) will be announced next week on the 17th. Despite not having been released yet, GTA6 is widely expected to make the cut, sparking debate on 5ch’s hardware/industry (Geha) board about the fairness of nominating a game that still hasn’t let media outlets play it a week before launch. There’s precedent for controversy here — Hideo Kojima’s award, which gave him a stage to criticize Konami, and the nomination of Elden Ring for what was at the time an unreleased DLC. The thread saw a mix of cynical takes (“it’s all about ad spend,” “this show exists for marketing”) and expectations that GTA6’s preorders, trailer views, and buzz make a GOTY nod a given.
Some of this is just GTA fanboys losing it, but
there’s also a lot of people saying that if they nominate a game that hasn’t even been released, this show is finished.
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
Not happening this year.
The question this time is whether they'll shove in a game that isn't even out yet, just for buzz and money.
Well, it was already a broken GOTY the moment you need to buy ads to win it.
Apparently review codes for early hands-on access have been going out to media since late October.
Well of course it'll look stuttery and blurry (ガクボケ, "gakuboke" — camera-pan motion blur/judder) once the camera starts moving.
but that one was fine since it never had any credibility or influence to begin with.
The Metacritic score is coming out late too.
That's Rockstar's own doing.
"Supposedly"…
Of course it won't show up until the embargo lifts.
Have you forgotten when Ocarina of Time's Metascore came out?
They could just win it next year.
Right, that's what I thought too.
No need to rush it right down to the wire.
I think review codes are out now and people are actually getting to play it.
Not letting even media touch it until the last minute is normal for Rockstar — GTA5 and RDR2 were the same way.
This time it sounds like they've tightened things up even further after the leaks, but review codes themselves have reportedly gone out.
TGA (lol)
(Note: last year's cutoff was November 12th)
https://thegameawards.com/faq
"Games must be commercially available to consumers by Friday, November 20, 2026, 9:00 PM Pacific Time."
That's way too blatant, lol
The deadline being over a week different from last year — is that actually confirmed info?
Was this decided before any of this even happened?
If they put Kojima on stage to bash Sony the way they did with Konami, I'd reconsider —
but yeah, that's not happening.
If it can't even do that, then that just shows GTA's only that good anyway.
It's always been only that good — I just want it exposed this time.
If it were a purely merit-based award, next year would be fine, but the marketing effect is on a completely different level.
Being able to go "BAM — PS's GTA6 just won GOTY"
is huge.
Honestly, they probably set the release date by working backwards from that big reveal moment.
The whole system of ranking games by calendar year is flawed to begin with, since release timing varies so much game to game.
With GTA it's actually both — it sets off a massive fireworks show once every decade or so, while also raking in huge microtransaction money every single month, every year.
FY Revenue / Op. Profit — Revenue / Op. Profit
FY20: 26,563 / 3,422 — 17,589 / 6,406
FY21: 27,398 / 3,461 — 16,953 / 5,927
FY22: 36,446 / 2,500 — 16,016 / 5,043
FY23: 42,677 / 2,902 — 16,718 / 5,289
FY24: 46,700 / 4,148 — 11,900 / 2,800
FY25: 46,857 / 4,633 — 23,130 / 3,601
FY26: 48,300 / 7,000 — 20,500 / 3,700 (forecast)
Sony's crazy impressive.
Isn't it getting worse and worse at hiding it?
I bet they genuinely think they're fighting the whole world lol
Video games take at least 50 hours, and honestly even hundreds of hours wouldn't be enough to properly evaluate one — yet the entry deadline is just a few weeks out.
Just from that alone, you can tell TGA is really more of a marketing event that uses an award show as its hook.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The Game Awards (TGA) is a privately run ceremony organized personally by Geoff Keighley, and eligibility is determined not by a game’s actual release date but by whether it launches before a deadline the organizers themselves set. This year’s deadline is November 20, later than in previous years, leading some in the thread to suspect it was deliberately shifted to line up with GTA6’s release schedule. The thread also saw conflicting claims about whether media had been given early access, with a later correction noting that review codes had in fact been distributed since late October. TGA has a history of decisions that drew questions about its fairness — including the unreleased Elden Ring DLC’s nomination and the award given to Hideo Kojima — and this debate is seen as an extension of that pattern. The thread’s overall shape pits skepticism toward an awards show built around ad revenue and buzz against the expectation that, given GTA6’s sales and attention, a win is simply a foregone conclusion — with neither side really engaging the other.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “[Bad News] With TGA’s GOTY Nominations Dropping Next Week on the 17th, Is a GTA6 Win Impossible?“.
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