Metacritic crowns its best game publisher of 2023
Metacritic has just released its 13th annual game publisher rankings, in which it ranks the top gaming publishers to determine who achieved the highest average Metascore. They look at the highest and lowest-rated games published by these studios and rank them based on the critical reception they received. It’s important to note that this is for publishers and not developers, meaning independent indie studios will be left out of this but larger publishers for indie developers (such as Devolver Digital) are included.
An interesting publisher to start off with is Square Enix- which didn’t exactly have the best 2022. They dropped from 12th to 26th last year. With the shutdown of two live service games (Chocobo GP and Babylon’s Fall) less than 12 months after release, it was clear that Square’s strategies just weren’t working. On top of this, cool releases like Forspoken really dragged down their overall scores. The only games that actually managed to pull them up slightly were rereleases like the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster and the Nier Automata Switch Port.
Moving up the list slightly lets us see the publisher for game of the year award-winning Elden Ring at 24th- far below their rank of 7th in 2021. This may be a surprise to a lot of people- especially considering the smash hit that Elden Ring was. However, that was only one game. With lacking releases like Dragon Ball: The Breakers and a slew of below-average Gundam-like games, even game of the year status wasn’t enough to pull this studio up.
At rank 17, we can see EA- who have moved down from eight places from the previous year. This is due to its slew of low-rated sports games like FIFA, MADDEN, and NFL, each of which dragged down the score substantially (as they do basically every year). Following on from this, we can see Nintendo at number 12- which is slightly higher than its 14th spot in 2021. This is thanks to some well-received titles like Splatoon 3 and game of the year nominee Xenoblade Chronicles 3. The reason it couldn’t crack the top 10 comes down to some same-y titles like Pokemon Scarlet/Violet and Nintendo Switch Sports, which failed to gain high scores.
Cracking into the top 10, we have Devolver Digital in the 10th spot. One higher than 2021, quite a few indie gems were released throughout the year that managed to impress reviewers. Titles like Cult of the Lamb and console ports of Inscryption prove that indies are still the best source for original ideas and titles. Up by one compared to the last list is Sega at 7th. This is down to the rereleases of Persona 5 Royal and offerings like Two Point Campus, which never fail to bring up review scores. This is likely to shoot up even more in 2023 considering the recent ports of Persona 3 and 4 respectively.
Strangely, another studio moving up by just one place is Activision Blizzard. Ignoring the huge deal that may or may not be having with Microsoft, Activision maintained an impressive year if you ignore the disastrous Diablo: Immortal for mobile. Let’s hope that Diablo IV manages to bump up the studio’s score this year rather than bringing it down. Finally, at the number 1 spot is Sony, who had a fantastic year. With the remade Last of Us Part 1, the huge open world Horizon: Forbidden West, and, of course, the incredible God of War: Ragnarok, its no surprise that Sony as a publisher took home the crown as 2022’s best overall publisher according to Metacritic scores.
