I know we have a best developers thread somewhere, but I don't remember a best publishers thread.

Publishers being the ones that deal with the retailers, put the money behind the game, localise it and so on and so forth. They don't make the games, they just make sure gamers can buy them.

My five favourite publishers all specialise in bringing Japanese games into western markets:

NISAmerica - is my favourite. These guys localise NIS games (obviously), but also most of Compile Heart's games, and they used to look after GUST. Niche RPGs are NISA's speciality, and I love them for it.
Tecmo Koei - these guys have the best community engagement in the business. Follow the community manager, Chin (@inspchin) on Twitter for proof of that. Oh, and Tecmo Koei's games are awesome.
Rising Star Games - They bring Harvest Moon to Europe/ Australia. Enough said.
Namco Bandai - otherwise known as the publisher that brings just about every major Japanese RPG release to Australia. Dark Souls, Ni No Kuni, Square Enix's games etc etc - Namco is THAT publisher here.
Ghostlight - Ghostlight's a tiny little outfit, but it has brought over a couple of Compile Heart games (the ones NISA wouldn't touch...). Oh, and they tend to publish Atlus' internally-developed games, such as Shin Megami Tensei. They're pretty cool for that.

Atlus- Probably the one publisher with more quality in its veins than it should have.

Nintendo- For obvious reasons

XSeed- I swear, everything they publish is amazing.

Capcom- I've always loved Capcom even if the last two years or so have been a little mixed.

Konami- Metal Gear.

Retro Studios: They make great games worth the Nintendo name. Especially if that name is Donkey Kong Country.
Level 5: Professor Layton, Dragon Quest IX, Ni No Kuni, and Crimson Shroud.
I also agree Atlus is awesome.

Nintendo, as another mentioned, for obvious reasons.
Natsume- Harvest Moon <3
Atlus- They have a bunch of quirky titles I enjoy
Level 5 - PROFESSOR LAYTON

I'm sure there are more.

Used to...I'd say CAPCOM, but after they cancelled Legends 3...well, they're on my doodoo list.

• Level 5 (Liberation Maiden, Crimson shroud)
• Naughty Dog (Jak I, II & III)
• Lucas Arts (Star Wars: Forced Unleashed)
• EA (Sims 3)
• Square Enix (Heroes of Ruin)
• Nintendo (Mario Kart 7, SM3DL [ect]...)
• Sega

Only listing people that haven't been mentioned thus far

Shin'en - They develop and publish, so I'll give it to them for some of the best-looking games on the Wii.
Ubisoft - A lot of their titles have been extremely mixed in reception, but they've pushed out some great games like Red Steel 2 and NMH2
EnjoyUp - For recently saving La-Mulana on a high-risk platform, plus I still want to see a 99Bullets 3D
Not Nicalis - Speaking for Europeans and Nigoro here. I'm only doing it for some contempt of lazy porting.

Level 5, Naughty Dog, Retro Studios, and Nicalis are developers. Two of which are owned by publishers.

Doesn't Level 5 publish its own in Japan?

No.. I'm pretty sure Nicalis is a publisher. Seeing how their entire backlog is ports minus one freemium iOS game. Plus they're listed as publisher for many games.

Level-5 is a publisher in Japan.

That said, everyone who listed Level-5 in this specific thread did it wrong, since you haven't played a game published by Level-5 (unless you imported from Japan/ live in Japan). Level-5 is published by Nintendo, Sony, Namco Bandai, and so on in the west.

Naughty Dog and Retro are not publishers though.

Naughty dog was great, and i was surprised when they didn't make jack 4 (Forgot the title)

your very wrong. If level 5 was not a publisher i would not be playing Liberation Maiden or Crimson Shroud, which i got from my e-shop.

No, I am not.

Actually, he's right. Level-5 published the Guild01 games on the NA eShop.

Source?

I'm not saying that is wrong, however, unless Level-5 handled the publicity for those releases (or recruited a PR firm to handle it), they didn't publish it.

I was under the impression that Nintendo handled the publishing.

Edit - according to the reviews on this site the review copies were provided by Level-5. I stand corrected, looks like they are publishing in the West.

That said, Layton, White Knight Chronicles and Ni No Kuni are not published by Level-5 in the west, and therefore don't count for the purposes of this thread.

@Bankai- Your very wrong. If level 5 was not a publisher i would not be playing Liberation Maiden or Crimson Shroud, which i got from my e-shop.

I already acknowledged that I was wrong there.

If you want to list Level-5 as one of your favourite publishers for three minigames (good minigames, but minigames), then ok.

I wouldn't exactly call Liberation Maiden or Crimson Shroud minigames, at least in the traditional sense.

I was being hyperbolic - sorry if that didn't come through.

The point I was making was between the three Level-5 published games in the west, there's about 10 hours worth of gameplay (unless you're one of those folks that plays games over and over again). They're all very good games, but as a publisher, Level-5 is completely insignificant in the west.

It's ok. They only recently opened up an American branch less than a year ago. I think those eShop titles are the only ones published by the American branch.

Lessee...mine are Nintendo and Ubisoft