It’s interesting to see which games get seasoned developers excited.
Japanese website 4Gamer asked 133 industry figures to pick their favorite game of 2015, and Nintendo’s colorful third-person shooter Splatoon came out on top. Splatoon picked up 24 nominations, comfortably beating Bloodborne and Super Mario Maker, which finished joint second with eight votes each.
Nintendo took a risk launching Splatoon as a new intellectual property this year — originally intending it as a Mario spin-off — and that risk has really paid off. Splatoon sold over 1 million copies in its first month alone, and it’s continued to perform well, helping to boost Wii U software sales by 10 percent.
Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune — currently working on Mighty No. 9 — was one of the many survey respondents who voted for Splatoon as game of the year. Meanwhile, Shuhei Yoshida, the president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, picked out the surprise hit Rocket League, and Shadow of the Colossus and Ico creator Fumito Ueda chose the free-running zombie adventure Dying Light. You can see the full, translated voting list at DualShockers.