Video game fans are expected to have propelled 2004 U.S. sales to record levels, but critics have split on the best of 2004, an important source of bragging rights in the competitive industry.
This week, gaming Web site GameSpy named Microsoft Corp.'s "Halo 2" its Game of the Year. The sequel to the best-selling Xbox game ever, "Halo 2" quickly took that crown for itself, notching up $125 million in retail sales in just one day of release.
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Fans lined up for hours to get copies of the new "Halo," whose engineered super-soldier protagonist "Master Chief" has to protect the Earth from alien invasion.
"Master Chief" had plenty of competition this year, though, from "CJ," the star of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." That game won "Game of the Year" at the recent Spike TV Video Game Awards, the first major live televised award show for the $10 billion U.S. game business.
But the highly respected gaming Web site Gamespot.com went another way last week, eschewing action in favor of the more cerebral PC role-playing adventure "World of Warcraft."
Known as a "massively multiplayer online role-playing game," "World of Warcraft" lets players embark on a quest in the fantasy world of Azeroth. It was published by the Blizzard division of Vivendi Universal Games.
Video game sales now routinely rival the box office for Hollywood movies in annual receipts, and top game publishers regularly pull in more than $1 billion in revenue.