X03: Rainbow Six 3 takes top honours in inaugural awards

Ubi Soft's Rainbow Six 3 took the "Game of Show" award at X03 in Nice yesterday, becoming the winner of the first-ever official show awards at Microsoft's annual European showcase event.

Two other awards were also handed out at the event, with a gong for technical achievement going to Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden, while Peter Molyneux and Simon Carter were on stage to accept an innovation award for Fable.

The games were selected from a stable of over 100 Xbox titles which were on show at the event, representing a significant chunk of the console's line-up over the next six months or so.

Although there were few new product announcements at the show - with only Rallisport Challenge 2 and Race Driver 2 standing out as key launches - the high quality of the games on display was widely commented upon, with particular praise being heaped upon Pandemic's ultra-realistic Full Spectrum Warrior, Rare's quirky Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Bizarre Creations' Live-enabled Project Gotham Racing 2 and, of course, Red Storm's Rainbow Six 3.

There was, however, some muttering about the choice of games for which no playable code was available at the event as award winners. Although Fable and Ninja Gaiden were both shown off in videos and in closed sessions, it might have been nice to see the awards going to games which everyone could play in the giant tent housing the open publisher zones.

Despite the lack of any critical announcements (we suspect that there are still a few to come before Christmas, however), X03 may actually have been Microsoft's most successful "X" event yet. Not only did the quality of the Xbox line-up shine through strongly, but so the breadth and depth of the forthcoming range - with Microsoft making real efforts to push into new demographic areas and explore new genres on the console with games like Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Sudeki and Crimson Skies. If there are really still any Xbox doubters out there, then X03 will have gone a long way towards silencing them.