Elden Ring, Genshin Impact Take Top Honours at PlayStation Partner Awards

The annual PlayStation Partner Awards are a bit of an oddity, as they celebrate sales as opposed to critical success. The shindig – hosted by Sony’s Japanese department for decades now – is designed to reward publishing partners for their commercial success on PlayStation platforms, so it’s more of a corporate event than something like The Game Awards.

Nevertheless, the two big winners this year were Elden Ring and Genshin Impact, both of which were honoured with the Grand Award. To clarify exactly what this gong acknowledges, it’s attributed to games developed in Japan and Asia with the highest worldwide sales from October 2021 through September 2022.

Partner awards went to Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Hinokami Chronicles, Final Fantasy XIV, Mobile Suit Gundam: Battle Operation 2, Resident Evil Village, and Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. Again, this award is reserved for Japanese and Asian developed products with “top-ranked worldwide sales” and “particularly noteworthy activity results” in the aforementioned period.

Apex Legends won a Special Award for being an internationally developed product with notable sales in Japan and Asia, while Gran Turismo 7 was acknowledged with a similar gong for its success as a PS Studios product. In the Users’ Choice Category, which is fan voted based on a shortlist of playtime hours, Earth Defense Force 6, Elden Ring, Ghostwire Tokyo, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, and Stray won.

So yes, the criteria is all quite arbitrary, but we’ve always got the impression this event is more about schmoozing than anything too serious.