Metacritic, a sister-site of GameSpot, has published its annual rankings of game publishers. These rankings apply to games released in 2020, and the top publisher of the year may surprise you. Even more surprising are some of the names that ended up low on the list.
48 publishers' games were compiled for the ranking, which used several factors such as average game Metascore, percentage of products with "good" reviews, and percentage of products with "bad" reviews to determine the final total. This way of factoring in both the stinkers and the hits meant that even the smallest publishers had a shot of reaching the top spots. Several did, in fact, including Annapurna Interactive, Aksys Games, and No More Robots.
Sega took the top spot this year, averaging an 81.6 average review score and narrowly beating out Annapurna in terms of total points factoring into the ranking. It benefited from the continued success of the Yakuza series as well as Persona 4 Golden hitting PC. Capcom, Sony, and Activision Blizzard rounded out the top five.
Big names near the bottom include Bandai Namco and Koei Tecmo. The former had a few big misses like Fast & Furious Crossroads and several underwhelming anime games. Koei Tecmo didn't publish too many games in 2020 at all, but its only major critical hit was Nioh 2.
- Sega
- Annapurna Interactive
- Capcom
- Sony
- Activision Blizzard
- Microsoft
- Aksys Games
- No More Robots
- Nintendo
- Devolver Digital
- Square Enix
- Xseed
- 505 Games
- Ubisoft
- Focus Home Interactive
- Bethesda
- Team17
- Humble
- Sold Out
- Raw Fury
- Electronic Arts
- Take-Two
- Koch Media
- NIS America
- SNK
- Playism
- THQ Nordic
- Digerati
- Kalypso
- Daedalic Entertainment
- Headup Games
- Koei Tecmo
- PQube
- Curve Digital
- QubicGames
- ININ Games
- Nacon
- Bandai Namco
- All in! Games
- Wired Productions
- Ratalaika Games
- Merge Games
- Modus Games
- Blowfish Studios
- tinyBuild
- Silesia Games
- No Gravity Games
- Ultimate Games
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