Metacritic publishes a game publisher rankings every year, and 2017’s results are in. With 2017 being a year that saw huge “AAA” games draw tons of negative attention to themselves in the year of the loot box, the rankings are not that surprising. So how are these results derived? Metacritic takes a number of factors into consideration.
The first thing they take is the average Metascore for all games released in the year. Second they take the % of games with good reviews, this means a Metacritic rating of 75 or higher. Third, they take the % of games that received bad reviews, 49% or lower. Then they take the number of great titles, games with a score of 90% or better. Using these four figures in a weighted fashion, they come up with ranking.
The Top-12 Major Publishers of 2017
- Bethesda Softworks
- Nintendo
- Sega
- Activision
- Capcom
- Ubisoft
- Sony
- Square Enix
- Bandai Namco Entertainment
- Koei Tecmo Games
- NIS America
- Telltale Games
Also telling in the analysis is Electronic Arts’ drop off of the list. While it would’ve beat out some of the publishers listed above, Electronic Arts didn’t qualify for the “major publisher” category. Regardless, in the year of the loot box, EA’s highly rated games in 2017 dropped from 79% to just 49% with FIFA being their highest rated game. Big releases like Star Wars Battlefront and Need for Speed Payback were panned by critics.
Metacritic’s info dump on 2017 is pretty extensive, you can check it out here.Â
Published: Feb 26, 2018 08:23 am