Brazil's Mother Gaia Studios is the winner of Microsoft's Imagine Cup, a competition that challenged students from around the world to use XNA community tools to build games around the theme of environmental sustainability.

Microsoft recently showcased the finalists at the 2008 Games For Change event in New York, and Mother Gaia took home the Game Development prize with City Rain, the company announced today. Australia's Team SOAK won the Worldwide Software Design invitational, and Singapore's Team Trail Blazers won the Embedded Development invitational.

Said Microsoft:

A total of 370 students from 124 teams representing 61 countries and regions competed in the worldwide Imagine Cup finals in nine categories: Software Design, Embedded Development, Game Development, "Project Hoshimi" (Programming Battle), IT Challenge, Algorithm, Photography, Short Film and Interface Design. The student teams were asked to undertake a series of challenges relating to digital media or technology depending on the invitational.

Full announcement and details on the winners after the jump!

Last night, an expo was held at the 2008 Games For Change event in New York City, to showcase the six finalists in Microsoft's Imagine Cup competition. Students from around the world were challenged to build games around the theme of environmental sustainability, using Microsoft's XNA community tools

The winner will be chosen at an upcoming Finals event in Paris next month.

"This is just our small part we're playing," Microsoft XNA general manager Chris Satchell told us. "It's really a broader challenge to the industry."

Microsoft can provide tools and a platform to support the development of socially-conscious games and to help them reach an audience where they're already playing, Satchell said. "But no magic happens without the creators... it's the stars that really produce."

You can see a compilation video of the six "star" finalists above, and hit the jump to see video of the games, along with more info about the concepts and the teams behind them.