We don't NEED them but having an awards type thing that is actually equal in stature to the Academy Awards or the Emmy's is a long way off...mainly because reviews fall one of two ways.

Overly positive like the game has done no wrong or the game is overly bad and has done everything wrong. The journalistic integrity of the videogame world is complete .

If you look at RottenTomatoes.com you can see what I am talking about. Look at movies. They come in this huge array of scores each week while videogames(also on the site) are very skewed. 112 games on just the PS2 have scores of 90% or above. There are not that many good games.

There are also not that many good sources for games. You have a few big websites for the most part and then a handful of magazines. Where are the weekly newspaper reviewers?