Metacritic released its 14th annual publisher rankings earlier this week, with Nintendo slotting into the top 10 for 2023.
Thanks to the critical success of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and some other titles, Nintendo ranked sixth out of 46 publishers on the list. It had an average Metascore of 79.5 in 2023 after releasing 22 titles, with a total of four great games. The previous year it was 12. Here’s what Metacritic had to say about its latest score:
“Once again making our top 10, Nintendo released more titles than any other publisher on this year’s list. But despite the fact that four of those titles scored 90 or higher—easily the best of any publisher this year—Nintendo was prevented from ranking even higher due to its relatively low success rate of 73%, which was the lowest of any publisher that made our top 10.”
Ranking of the previous year: 12 (of 45)
Average meta score: 79.5
22 products (22 titles): 73% good, 0% bad
“Great” games: 4
Best game of 2023: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (NS) 96
Capcom (Resident Evil 4) was in first place, followed by Raw Fury (Cassette Beasts) and Chorus Worldwide (A Space for the Unbound). Sega (Persona 4 Golden) is in ninth place, Sony (Marvel’s Spider-Man 2) was in 13th place, and Microsoft (Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition) was at 15.
EA (Dead Space) was tied with Team17 (Blasphemous 2) in 16th place, Square Enix (Star Ocean: The Second Story R) was in 19th place, Ubisoft (Anno 1800 console edition) was 23rd, and Bandai Namco (Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon) was 27th on the list.
Here’s the full list of the top 10 publishers:
- Capcom
- Raw rage
- Chrous worldwide
- DANGEN Entertainment
- Annapurna Interactive
- Nintendo
- Aksys games
- Bethesda Softworks
- Prank
- Thunderous
Here’s how Metacritic compiled this score:
“Which game publishers released the best games in 2023? For the 14th year in a row, we’ve sifted through 12 months of data to determine the best and worst game publishers of the year, based solely on the quality of their releases in 2023. Sales and User Reviews don’t take this ranking into account; only critic reviews (which are recorded by each game’s Metascore) are used to rate performance.
“Publishers are ranked from worst to best in the gallery above based on a points system, calculated (as in previous years) according to the following four factors: average Metascore for all games published in 2023, % rated products with good reviews (at least 75), % rated products with bad reviews (49 or less), Number of great titles (Metascore 90 or more)
