Metacritic has revealed their annual ranking of the best and worst publishers worldwide, based on quality and reliability.
Many video game publishers are large and oversee multiple development teams or collaborate with external studios, making it challenging to maintain consistent quality across all games.
However, Metacritic calculates the games released by each publisher each year to determine the best performer. The ranking considers the average quality of the publisher’s games released in 2023 and the proportion of 'good', 'great', and 'bad' reviews.
Last year, Sony emerged as the top performer, but this year the winner is Capcom, who has been consistently successful recently, demonstrated by positive reviews for Dragon’s Dogma 2.
Despite Metacritic’s efforts to balance the results, the rankings often favor publishers with fewer releases. However, Capcom’s victory appears well-earned, with an average Metascore of 84.5.
Their standout games last year were the outstanding Resident Evil 4 and Street Fighter 6, along with the broader release of Monster Hunter Rise and Sunbreak, Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, and Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective.
The only game to not receive a 'good' Metascore was multiplayer shooter Exoprimal, which achieved a score of 67, but was still decent.
Many of the other top-ranked publishers were small indie companies, such as Cassette Beasts publisher Raw Fury, A Space For The Unbound publisher Chorus Worldwide, and DANGEN Entertainment – a company we admittedly hadn’t heard of before (they apparently published Bug Fables in 2020).
The second best-performing traditional publisher was Nintendo at number six, with an average Metascore of 79.5, while Bethesda secured the eighth spot with an average of 80.0 – its highest-ranking title was Hi-Fi Rush at 90, with Starfield settling on 83 in the end.
Sega, last year’s top publisher, came in at number nine, mainly due to Altus titles, while Sony was at 13 and Microsoft at 15.
The lowest-ranking publisher of the year, as expected, is a relatively unknown company, with Perpetual achieving an average Metascore ranking of just 52.1.
The full list can be found on the Metacritic website, although it’s primarily an amusing utilization of statistics, as every publisher consistently releases both good and bad games, depending on the developer.
