The Develop Industry Excellence Awards is apparently the only event that rewards Europe’s leading game development houses. Now in its sixth year, the Develop Awards 2008 stuffed 600 industry professionals into a hall to recognise some top game development talent.

Frontier Developments, headed by David Braben (known for Elite), won the Best New IP prize for Lost Winds on WiiWare. Traveller’s Tales took the Best Use of a License prize for Lego Indiana Jones, while Realtime Worlds (Crackdown) won the Business Development prize. Top studios include Splash Damage (Best Independent developer), Kuju’s DoubleSix (Best New Studio) and IdeaWorks3D (Best Mobile Studio).

Rockstar North, however, were the biggest winners, walking away with 3 awards; Visual Arts and Audio Accomplishment (GTA IV) and Best In-House Developer, as well as the Grand Prix awarded to Rockstar Games, Rockstar North’s parent company.

Other awards included the Publishing Hero award (won by Nintendo), Best Tools Provider (taken by Epic Games for Unreal Engine 3), Best Recruitment Firm (OPM), Best Services firm (awarded to Babel Media), Creative Outsourcing King (to Richard Jacques Studio) and the inaugural Games:Edu New Talent Award (won by University of Abertay & Dare to be Digital).