Metacritic has released its 2019 Best Publisher List of 2019, which has been ranked by critics of published games. While many publishers have surprisingly good results, Sony and Bethesda don’t even make it into the top 20.
As Metacritic writes in his blog entry, the places are not only distributed based on the average metascore, but also the amount of particularly good games with a rating of more than 75 points, great titles with more than 90 points and bad games with a rating of 49 points or have less impact on placement.
The Italian company 505 Games, which published Control and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night last year, surprisingly comes first. The average metascore of the eight titles is 80 points, with neither “great” nor “bad” games included.
Activision Blizzard made it to 2nd place, probably mainly because Warcraft 3 Reforged was postponed to 2020 and so with its metascore of just 59 points no longer falls into this statistic. The publisher’s highlight last year was the hit Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, with the average rating of 79.9 being pushed down a bit by Overwatch’s mediocre switch port and a Hearthstone add-on.
With 24 different titles, Nintendo is one of the largest publishers of the past year. Although there was no game with a rating of more than 90 points, an average of 80 out of 100 possible points is quite remarkable and sufficient for third place. The company has released several hits for its in-house console, the Nintendo Switch (from 309 euros on Amazon), including Mario Maker 2, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Astral Chain and Pokémon Sword and Shield.
Paradox Interactive follows in fourth place, followed by Capcom, Annapurna and Xbox Game Studios. It is exciting that Sony just made it to 22nd place – the majority of the 14 games published were rated only mediocre, the average metascore was 71.5. Bethesda Softworks even ends up in 30th place without any real highlights. The entire list can be found directly at Metacritic.
source:Metacritic
