Metacritic has released the 12th edition of the annual game publisher rankings. According to the result, with average 87.4 metascore, Microsoft bagged top position followed by Sony, Humble Games, Activision Blizzard, Bethesda Softworks, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Sega, Electronic Arts, and 505 Games in the rankings.
Sega was the top ranker in last rankings by Metacritic. This year it scored 77.6 metascore and stood at 8th position.
Microsoft’s position has improved from sixth in 2020 to first place in the 12th edition of the rankings. This is for the first time a publisher averaged more than 85 metascore. Forza Horizon 5, Psychonauts 2, Age of Empires IV, and Halo Infinite were top games released by Microsoft in 2021.
With 81.3 metascore Sony has also improved its ranking from fourth in last year to second in the latest rankings.
Humble Games (80.9) Activision Blizzard (80.6), Bethesda Softworks (80.2), Bandai Namco (78.5), Electronic Arts (78.3) and 505 Games (75.7) have improved their positions in the ranking while Capcom, with 80.6 metascore noted downfall in the rankings. A total of 43 publishers released five or more games in 2021.
Three of Microsoft’s titles Forza Horizon 5, Psychonauts 2, and the Xbox Series X version of Microsoft Flight Simulator scored more than 90, which is ‘great’. Other titles of the Microsoft were rated good.
Microsoft was followed by Sony with an average Metacritic score of 81.3, with just Destruction AllStars keeping Sony from closing the year with 100 percent “good” games.
Activision Blizzard, surprisingly, finished off the year in the fourth spot, regardless of the continuous controversies, and before being acquired by Xbox.
Despite the fact that Nintendo contained 18 games, it was not able to find place among top ten. It had to satisfy with 14th place in the ranking chart. None of the games of Nintendo was rated ‘great’ although Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury and Metroid Dread came close with scores of 89 and 88 individually.
Metacritic ranks publishers based solely on the quality of their 2021 releases. Critic reviews (as captured by each game’s metascore) are used to evaluate performance. Sales and user reviews do not factor into these rankings.
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Metacritic’s 12th Annual Game Publisher Rankings: https://t.co/GdpoplFDUh
Congrats to @Microsoft (Xbox Game Studios) – Metacritic’s Publisher of the Year. pic.twitter.com/EDmBn9qwIi— metacritic (@metacritic) March 11, 2022