As the saying goes, “It’s an honor just to be nominated.” If that’s the case, then we here at PlayStation are pretty well honored; The 2009 Video Game Awards nominees have just been announced, and Sony Computer Entertainment is up for 17 awards, more than any other publisher! UNCHARTED 2 leads all games with a record eight nominations, including GAME OF THE YEAR. See below for the full list of SCE titles and what award they’re up for.

But going back to that saying – being honored is nice, but winning is better. Fortunately, the decision isn’t left up to a shadowy cabal of Illuminati; for the first time ever, gamers from around the world get to vote for the victors between now and Saturday, December 12th. Hat in hand, we kindly ask you to vote for your favorite PlayStation games on Spike’s VGAs site.

In honor of our record number of VGA nominations, we’re currently planning a viewing party near the LA studios where the VGAs will be broadcast live to the world. We might even be able to get some of you fine readers into the event itself… So vote now, and stay tuned for more details here on the PlayStation.Blog!

PlayStation’s 2009 Video Game Award Nominees

UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves (8)

• Game of the Year
• Studio of the Year (Naughty Dog)
• Best Graphics
• Best Action Adventure Game
• Best PS3 Game
• Best Original Score
• Best Voice (Claudia Black as Chloe Frazer)
• Best Voice (Nolan North as Nathan Drake)

Killzone 2 (3)

• Best Shooter
• Best Graphics
• Best PS3 Game

Gran Turismo (PSP) (1)

• Best Driving Game

inFAMOUS (1)

• Best PS3 Game

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (1)

• Best PS3 Game

Fat Princess (1)

• Best Downloadable Game

Flower (1)

• Best Independent Game Fueled by Dew

God of War III (1)

• Most Anticipated Game

Also, don’t forget to vote for PS3-exclusive Demon’s Souls as Best RPG.

Why bring this up? Because, as some of you more social-media-savvy readers might already know, Mashable has opened its 3rd annual Open Web Awards. If you don’t know what these awards are about, there’s an international voting competition where major online communities (blogs, Twitter, Facebook fanpages, etc.) duke it out for the top spot. I think the winner gets cookies or something.

First round in the competition is the nominations period (NOW – November 15th). The top 5 nominees in each category will move forward to the voting round (November 18th – December 13th). Winners for each category will be announced on December 15th.

Here’s where you come in: please help nominate PlayStation.Blog in the “Best Corporate Blog” category! PlayStation fans are undoubtedly the most vocal on the Internet, so show your PlayStation love and nominate the blog, and we’ll win this thing for sure.

Nominating is as simple as a few easy steps:

• Go to http://mashable.com/owa/votes
• Sign in with your Twitter or Facebook account
• Once logged in, enter http://blog.us.playstation.com/ in the “Nominate Name or URL” section
• Select the “Best Corporate Blog” category
• Hit submit

…and you’re done! You can nominate once per day per category, so vote early and vote often. The nominations period ends on November 15th. Hopefully with your help, we’ll make it to the voting round. Then we can ask you for a bit more help :-)

We don’t ask for much, right?

“Of the more than 8000 entries submitted to the 12th Annual Webby Awards, fewer than 15% were distinguished as an Official Honoree.”

So the way I see it, that’s an 85 or so – a solid B. Not bad for a blog that’s less than a year old (other Honorees include Destructoid, GameSpot, GameDaily, GamesRadar), but certainly there’s room for improvement. Next year, it’d be great to see PlayStation.Blog in the more prestigious Nominees group (best of luck to this year’s noms: Wired Game|Life, Gamasutra and Zero Punctuation’s home, The Escapist).

So how can we make that happen? By serving you, the readers, better. In the past months, we’ve introduced a number of new features to make this site more useful: in-line commenting, faster loading, post tagging, and the aforementioned post ratings. I’d also like to officially introduce another new feature today: tag feeds. Here’s how it works:

See the tags at the bottom of this post (”awards, psb”)? They can be used to find all the posts this blog has ever put out there on specific topics – pretty standard in the blogosphere. But here’s something that isn’t: you can now subscribe to any of these tags. So say you only want to be notified when new Resistance info is posted. Just click on the Resistance tag, and all the Resistance-related posts will show up.

Now go up to the address bar, and just add the word “feed” at the end. You’ll be given the ability to then add a Resistance feed to your RSS reader (I use Google’s reader, but they all pretty much do the same thing). Now any time we post something with the Resistance tag, it’ll show up there.

This works with any tag on our site: Gran Turismo 5, THE EYE OF JUDGMENT, Firmware Updates, anything. Perfect for finding those title/topic-specific posts when your RSS fills up with hundreds (or thousands) of posts per day.

We’ve got some other nice features on the way in 2008. What would you like to see implemented?

While the last couple of weeks have been kinda slow video game-news-wise, there’s still been plenty of fine reading. Everyone with a Web site or blog seems to have written up a Best Games of 2007 feature, and here are some highlights and emergent themes:

IGN may have put together the most in-depth “Best of” series, with separate listings for PSP and PS3. Lot to read there.

Gamasutra went beyond just the Top 10 Games of the Year for various systems (though Persona 3 and Ratchet & Clank Future: ToD were both honored), the site also highlighted its Top 5 Trends (#2 “Indies Going Major” – “two of the most significant games released to the console download market this year: Everyday Shooter and flOw.”), and God of War II’s Kratos checking in as one of the “Top 5 Most Affecting Characters.”

Another nod to Persona 3, and another somewhat-lower-profile gem (Folklore) made Susan’s Top 10 on Wired’s Game|Life blog.

I found myself nodding vigorously in agreement with MTV Multiplayer writer Stephen Totilo’s “Great Gaming Moments of 2007.” Sniping soldiers on the bridge with Heavenly Sword’s Kai and God of War II’s opening battle with the Colossus of Rhodes are two of my favorite gaming moments of 2007, and probably of all time.

Yet more love for Kratos, who not only ran away with multiple PlayStation 2 Game of the Year awards, but also received a number of cross-platform nods in GoW II.

For a more PlayStation-centric view (nothing wrong with that!), the PS3 Fanboy/PSP Fanboy sites dug really deep into every category that you could probably imagine.

And while New Years is traditionally a time to look back, I love the way Game Informer looked forward on this list. Plenty to get excited about, no?

OK, back to work on what will be an exciting 2008 for you PlayStation fans! I hope your holidays were somewhere near as exciting as it was for these kids!

1UP has just such a setup with their 2007 1UP Awards. PlayStation titles are well represented through 13 categories, so let your voices be heard, Sony fans! The voting runs until Dec. 31, 2007, with award winners to be announced in February.

Among my personal selections: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune for Best Adventure Game, Jeanne d’Arc for Best Role Playing Game, Rock Band for Best Multiplayer Game (that was a tough one!), and Warhawk for Best Console Downloadable Game. Make sure you vote… and tell your friends to do the same!

Check out this video for a taste of what GT Awards is all about.

Industry experts scan the show floor and judge all the entries to select “Best in Class” winners for the following five categories: Best Hot Rod, Best Japanese Import, Best European Import, Best Truck/SUV and Best Domestic. From there, Kazunori Yamauchi carefully examines these “Best in Class” winners to select the BIG ONE – Best in Show.

Check out the category winners from this year’s GT Awards below:

The winner last night at the 2007 GT Awards was a 2007 Audi TT submitted by Marcel Horn. It is a beautiful car and we are all very excited about driving it (very fast) in a future GT product.

Also, check out this image below of last year’s GT Awards winner, a 1960 Corvette that was playable in Gran Turismo 5 Prologue at Tryst last night. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is set to continue blurring the lines of racing simulation and reality – it looks amazing! Just think: the same amount of data used for an entire car in GT4 is now used for just one headlight in Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. WOW!

Following the awards ceremony, guests were also treated to an outstanding live performance by Chris Cornell. He rocked the crowded house with a set that no one will soon forget.

“These awards recognize the games that will shape the future of interactive entertainment, as demonstrated via hands-on playable form at the 2007 E3 Media and Business Summit”

We here at SCEA wanted to extend a quick congrats to all those nominated, especially the people behind the PlayStation games that were recognized this year; in particular, the teams at Media Molecule for Little Big Planet which won “Best Original Game” and at Guerilla Games for Killzone 2 which earned “Special Commendation for Graphics.” Congratulations all!