Microsoft and Nintendo are among the nominees announced today for the 2006 Game Developers Choice awards, an industry awards event where the winners are picked by game developers. The winners of these prestigious awards will be announced next month at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose.

The nominees for "best game" are: Animal Crossing: Wild World by Nintendo, God of War by Sony Computer Entertainment America, Guitar Hero from Harmonix and Red Octane, Shadow of the Colossus from Sony Computer Entertainment America and The Movies, a PC game from Lionhead Studios and Activision. Having extensively played the first four, my vote goes to "God of War."

Microsoft Game Studios was nominated in the audio and technology categories for Project Gotham Racing 3 and the writing category for Jade Empire. The Chicago-based Wideload Games studio was nominated for best new studio. Wideload was founded by Alex Seropian, the co-founder of Bungie Studios (creator of the "Halo" series). Seropian left Bungie after it was acquired by Microsoft in 2000.

Nintendo picked up additional nominations for "Animal Crossing: Wild World" and "Nintendogs."