Every year, Metacritic tallies up all the review data it collects and publishes a report that summarizes how each publisher did overall for that past year. Naturally, this makes for some interesting reading, as it provides a wider snapshot of how the industry is doing, as well as how each company has been performing year on year. Metacritic just published the results for 2017 and, to the surprise of no one, Nintendo had quite the bumper year.

Overall, Nintendo placed second in the rankings, with an average review score of 78 being just beat out by Bethesda's score of 79.9. Most importantly, Nintendo was the only company that managed to score over 90 with three different games. Here’s what Metacritic said in its summary:

Nintendo once again released more distinct titles than any other publisher, while somehow managing to boost its average Metascore (and overall ranking) above the already admirable figures for the year before. The gaming giant was also the only publisher to achieve a 90+ score for three different titles in 2017. That group includes new Mario Kart and Super Mario installments as well as our 2017 Game of the Year, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. All three of those games were released for Nintendo’s new Switch console—a massive hit that managed to out-sell its predecessor, the Wii U, in less than a year. In fact, Nintendo’s Metascore average for its Switch releases was 80.0, compared to an average of 75.5 for its 3DS games.

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For reference, here's a chart of how the publishers did overall:

Publisher Rankings

What do you think? Are you surprised that Bethesda topped the ranks this year? Do you think Nintendo will do even better this year? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

[source metacritic.com]