Microsoft And Sony Top Metacritic's 12th Annual Game Publisher Rankings, Nintendo Places 14th

Microsoft at number 1 ?? 🧐
Have they ever made a lot of kiddie games like Nintendo did exclusively for XBOX Series ?

@BenAV Last year had a number of interesting first party titles, but not many big first party releases. Most of the games were smaller titles, remasters or remakes. It might have had the largest number of first party titles of any year for the Switch, though.

“ Some other companies to make the top 10 included Activision Blizzard in 4th, Bethesda in 5th, Sega in 8th place and Electronic Arts in 9th place.”
This really says how much you should care about this list.

So it tends to be more about quantity. Microsoft slap their name on everything nowadays so it's no surprise to see them up at the top.

Nintendo didn't publish many games last year and even less AAA titles. Not sure this year will improve much either.

....Article duplicates? I thought my comment was deleted...but apparently not...lol

@ATaco You know that makes no statistical sense right? Someone slapping their name on everything would end up with a middle of the road average score. That should be a "5" in a perfect review score world but in reality is somewhere around 6-7.

it may have been a meh year for nintendo fans but...
THIS YEAR WE'RE GETTIN #1 BABY
MARIO BRUDDAHS 2 GAME OF THE YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAARRR
***** YOU MICHAELSOFT BINBOWS YOURE GOING DOWWWWNNNN
D-O-W-N DOOOOOWWWNNNN
i may or may not be a biased source

@ShadowofTwilight22 the question is how, sega hasn't really been super prominent in recent memory. I mean there was a few games, but not enough to invalidate metroid dread, bowser's fury, warioware, MP superstars, ect. It just don't add up!

Gotta release actual first party games to be on that list.
Let's be honest, Nintendo have been slow in that regard.
Not that this list means a lot to most of us.

@Freek very true, but companies that were higher up didn't do much either

@Kiz3000 @PtM Fine, Microsoft have been slapping their name on all the good games. Happy now?

@nowthisisepic
Yeah true.
The list doesn't mean much tbh.
Just a shopping list.😜

@ATaco jeez dude i think they were just trying to correct a simple mistake i dont think it was meant to be a big deal

@Freek honestly

Get another reason I don't take metacritic seriously, I've played halo infinite and flight simulator and they weren't all that great. Fora and psychonauts were the only decent games from them. Pretty sure Nintendo or Sony will be on top this year though with the exclusives so far and the ones planned for release.

Well i don't own a Microsoft console since OG Xbox, but they indeed released some quality games last year like forza horizon 5
and their subscription service is by far the best in the market. Maybe all others should step up their game too

@nowthisisepic I'm extremely angry right now. I don't think I'll sleep soundly for weeks. I think I should calm down and play some games from the best publisher out there, Microsoft.

@ATaco LMAO

Well what DID Nintendo publish last year?

TBF, Microsoft had an excellent year, undoubtedly better than Sony’s, which can’t be that common.

They done Capcom wrong, though! My personal nominee for best publisher of 2021.

Activision at 4th and EA at 9th? After Vanguard and Battlefield 2042? As if.

@Pod Metroid Dread?

I’m surprised to see MS at the top; aside from AoE4 what else was big last year and first party? Honestly curious.

2021 was a pretty lacklustre year for 1st Party Nintendo releases. I'm sure they'll do better this year.

Yeesh. I hate to be the obsessive fanboy throwing out accusations of bias, but Nintendo got seriously snubbed. Bowser's Fury, Mario Party Superstars, and Metroid Dread were all stellar and among the best games released on the Switch to date. WarioWare was okay and Mario Golf Super Rush was kind of mediocre, but it wasn't a bad year by any means. What did Sega do, exactly? Mess up Monkey Target and release a buggy Sonic remaster? (I like Banana Mania and Colors Ultimate, but still--hardly deserving of being 6 places ahead of Nintendo.) I didn't even know Humble published games, I thought they just did those bundles, and yet they're standing at #3. What do they make that I should be taking interest in? Heck, what did ACTIVISION do last year other than destroy their public relations?

@Ryu_Niiyama Halo Infinite; Forza Horizon 5; Psychonauts 2; Flight Sim Series X and Deathloop (and Age of Empires 4 as you mentioned). Extremely strong lineup.

@nowthisisepic I believe Sega do a lot of highly regarded PC games like Total War and Football Manager. Not a PC gamer, but I understand they get highly rated with each entry.

Microsoft had flight simulator, psychonauts and Forza which all scored very highly. Quality over quantity.

Nintendo had a lot of games last year, but quite a few were "good but not great" which will have brought the average down. Not bothered, Metroid Dread is still a classic.

@K1LLEGAL does Deathloop count since it was in development before the acquisition? Hmm but good to know I didn’t miss anything. Bounced off most of that list but I can see how that would get them to the number 1 spot.

Well done Microsoft and Sony, well deserved.

No.4 Activision/Blizzard is now owned by Microsoft. They will not delayed games like Call of Duty or Battlefield. Why is Nintendo doing that? Advance Wars is just a cartoon turn based game. Do you think people will stop playing chess when there's a war going on?

Nintendo just have fewer titles released compared to others so it's not a big surprise they are that low. Releasing more games doesn't mean they are also better experiences, but it's easier to be in the top places.

I give Metacritic a 15 out of 100 for this list.

I think these ratings just aren't geared towards Nintendo's strategy. Minigame collections like Wario Ware and Mario Party, unconventional games like gamebuilder garage and Miitopia have mountains to climb to get higher ratings. But they have an audience.

Whereas if you just publish a handful of mega games you'd perform very well. Nintendo had 18 releases vs Microsoft's 5. It'd be easier to ensure 5 games all score high than 18.

@Martijn87 How does the quantity help? It's an average. MS didn't publish a ton of games, but all the stuff they did put out was reviewed really, really well.

If I bought games based off review scores, I'd probably have given up on gaming by now. Maybe it's just because my enjoyment can never match the anticipation caused by other people hyping up a game, but most of the games that I feel most pleasantly surprised by are in the 60-70 range, whereas anything above 90 is probably going to be a disappointment. The fact that I usually prefer sequels that add new layers onto established formulas rather than "breaking the mold" and "revolutionizing" a series to the point where it's not even the thing I enjoyed anymore doesn't help.

@Not_Soos While the Nintendo games you mentioned were highly rated, Nintendo had a few that were 'Average' which pulled the overall score down - stuff like the Pokémon D/P remakes and Famicom Detective Club along with the likes of Mario Golf that you mentioned didn't review all that well. SEGA includes all the Atlus stuff (Persona, SMT) as well as the Yakuza franchise and Football Manager which seem to review quite well. Despite seemingly mixed reviews, Monkey Ball does have a pretty good Metacritic score - in fact the only SEGA games that were considered average seemed to be Sonic and the Olympics Game.
You should head over to the Metacritic Article which explains the scoring and gives a bit more detail on the top 30 - quite an interesting read.

Well deserved! Imagine what the future holds with all the new games that Xbox Game Studios are making.

There's no way Nintendo is behind Activision Blizzard, not after the events of the past few years. This list is complete BS

@Martijn87 actually Nintendo publishes some of the highest quantity of games per year. They're definitely on top of Sony and Microsoft in terms of platform holders at least.

@Axecon I agree!

@Axecon The rating is measured on the average score of the games, not the morality of the company. Last year Activision released the Tony Hawk's remaster and a new Crash game. I haven't played either, but they both reviewed well across the board as far as I recall. They also had Call of Duty which had good-not-great scores (I think) but overall their average score would have been one of the better ones.

@liverpoolvk
True story.
I only played the demo myself, but people say it really is quite the game.

Nintendo's only critically acclaimed game last year was Meteoid Dread. That alone was not enough to beat Flight Sim, Psychonauts 2, FH5, Returnal, R&C, Deathloop, etc. Many of Nintendo fans fail to realize that gaming goes beyond Nintendo consoles, and then complain to everyone who rightfully say that they did not do enough last year compared to the rest of the publishers.

@Not_Soos Amongst other things, Sega published Shin Megami Tensei V in North America and Persona 5 Strikers worldwide. Kind of flies under the radar for most people because Atlus is the name they associate with both series, but Sega is the publisher.

Had Square Enix not made stinkers like Balan: Wonderworld, Babylon's Fall, or release the whole Kingdom Hearts series in cloud form they would had made it to the top 10, so much bad decision on good games and so much hype surrounding mediocre games cause their downfall.

@JasmineDragon Actually, Sega owns Atlus.

"averaging" all the reviews for a game to come up with its 'true' score has always been a dubious practice. it doesn't quite make sense if you really think about it.

averaging all the averages to come up with the value of a publisher makes even less sense than that.

personally, ill take all the "EGM silver" games youve got over the AAA critically hailed brown apocalypse games that are come out and are forgotten every year.

Nintendo keeps releasing low quality sports games, which doesn't help, along with lazy ports.

Glad 2022 looks much better

Square Enix published the worst rated game of the year, in Balan Wonderworld, and still placed higher than Nintendo.

Not only is Microsoft ranked first, but their studios make the majority of the top 5 of this year,

Go Sega! 8th place

Seems artificial to separate subsidiaries from parent companies in this ranking

@-wc- One such example of this averaging being stupid is that Undertale is ranked higher than Mario Kart 8 and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and literally all other Switch games that aren't Breath Of The Wild and Mario Odyssey. It's just a 5-hour long witty and memey RPG with some replay value. I enjoyed it, but it ain't a filet mignon of gaming.

How does this handle the disparity in the number of games released by each company? If one company releases one game that gets a 90, and another company releases ten games from 70-100, is it really fair to say the one game company is ranked higher? Does it even matter at that point?

@Banjo- I'm aware of that.

Let me put it this way. Two of their big three titles were remasters/remakes. It makes sense.

@Kyloctopus Only reason Nintendo placed low was caused of the awful N64 NSO expansion pack offerings they introduced last year. It was garbage at launch and they got the thumbs down for it. It's much better now but the damages were already done otherwise had they delay the announcement until March of this year they would had been in a much better position.

@SalvorHardin Well, yes. While you may not like those companies and some of their buisness practices are questionable (as are Nintendos) the fact is that EA, Activation etc do actually make a number of quality titles each year.

@Specter_of-the_OLED possibly but the year before Nintendo was only marginally better at 9th.

@ShadowofTwilight22 The fact is that SEGA are consistently an excellent publisher and developer.

Their only series that really suffers from inconsistent quality is Sonic and Monkey Ball, but those are really the only active series they make that appeals to the Nintendo crowd. Not many Nintendo fans are also into Total War, Yakuza, Endless Space, Judgement, Football Manager, Persona etc.

this year i can see Nintendo on the top 3 best rated publisher.

@AnonymousWizard

You clearly have not seen how many gamers are at this point begging for Sega /atlus to release persona games on Nintendo consoles then

On one hand I am surprised, but then I remember for example how an lot of game journos complained that Metroid dread was too difficult and as an result gave it an lower score.

How? I mean Dread! And there were other 1st party title which didn’t sell bad.

And yet 2021 was still arguably the Switch's third best year, due to the good games, consistent releases, and third party support. Many of the games in the yellow aren't particularly mediocre, either, though there were a lot of them in 2021

Nintendo published last year?

@JasmineDragon OK, I'm sorry that you felt offended because I corrected that. It was meant for readers, too. You have an extremely thin skin because I didn't say anything offensive at all.

@ATaco If they slapped their name on anything, they wouldn't be #1 as it would drag down the average.

If you bothered to read article you would know it were about highest scores on average.
Quality over quantity.

@Mando44646 @dimi Xbox also had Flight Simulator and Halo Infinite among others.

Yeah. All the ports and the low budget sports games is what drags Nintendo down.

BOTW 2, Bayonetta 3 and Splatoon 3 should be a thing in 2022.

@Giancarlothomaz Not if they keep spitting out old Wii U ports and low budget games.

Whys Bethesda on the list aren't their games being included in Microsoft's published games

@Ventilator i don't see old Wii U port and low budget games on Nintendo schedule this year.

@Giancarlothomaz They are usually announced on Nintendo directs.

@PtM

I'm aware that that's how the list was divined.

my point is that averaging all the subjective scores means very little (especially when you consider one site might call a 5/10 "average," and on another a 7 is "average"), and averaging all the averages means even less.

I doubt a lot of people are happy with where Nintendo placed on the list, and some will think it’s well deserved, but the way I’m looking at it -
Nintendo had about five or six games, but the only core game was really Metroid Dread - you could make an argument for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, which I played and still haven’t finished because I lost interest. Maybe that’s because my first core Pokémon game was Moon, but I still feel strongly BDSP didn’t perform as well as it could have. In the comments, I haven’t seen too much of BDSP but I think it could’ve hurt Nintendo’s score, along with their party games. Highly doubt a Mario Golf will ever perform as well as, say, 3D World. You have to take into consideration the lack of mainline games, which are generally well received and worked on longer and cared for and nurtured by Nintendo. But next year is chock full of first party core games like Splatoon, and there’s just lots of hype in general, especially around E3, and that leads me to believe Nintendo will perform so much better this year

@Specter_of-the_OLED That’s not how these rankings work. Metacritic has aggregated all the reviews for the yearly input of every publisher’s games and expansions. Nintendo simply had the 14th highest average of all the publishers. N64 Nintendo Switch Online was not included in their average because it didn’t get reviewed by the media. The measures to rank these companies (while a bit flawed imo) are purely quantitative.

@Ventilator If you read the comments you'd see you're not the first person to correct me on that.

@Kyloctopus Actually this is not just a simple aggregate of averages. If it was, Nintendo would be ahead of Square Enix, Dangen, and 505 Games. Still only 11th place, but higher up the list.

I went straight to Metacritic to see how they actually devise this list, and truth be told it is actually far too convoluted. They have a "points" system with a lot of factors with arbitrary scores awarded for each category.

@Would_you_kindly dont remember any new Bestheda game in 2021. We're expecting Starfield and GhostWire: Tokyo

@Ryu_Niiyama Last year there was Forza Horizon 5 (92) , Flight Simulator for Xbox (90) and Halo Infinite (87) and Psychonauts 2 (87) as well.

as for Deathloop it didn't count for Microsoft, but for Bethesda.

@edusoares Thank you for the info.

@AnonymousWizard They will be if Sega release those, Persona quite literally. The thing is Sega recent market are mostly focus on the PC and mobile crowd. Without worrying about hardware they had less controversies to worry about and though Sonic games are mediocre, merchandise, movies, and shows of the blue blur are still good and selling.

@dimi deathloop came out

@dimi deathloop

@ATaco Noop It is about avarage highest score, Microsoft released like 4 games last year.

They came from Age Of Empire 4 (they own the IP since 2001), Halo Infinite(they own the IP since 2001), Forza Horizon 5 (they created the IP in ~2004), Microsoft Flight Simulator (they own the IP since ~1984) and Psychonauts 2 (that they own since 2019, but without the deal the game would be released in 2018, without Boss battles and some more cut content, with the acquisition they got 3 years for development + money to finish It)

@Would_you_kindly No Bethesda games are not included in the Xbox Game Studios list, two independent publishers subsidiary to the Microsoft Gaming division.
AKA Xbox owns 2 publishers, soon to be 3 (technically 4 but despite operating independently Activision and Blizzard is not something that actually applies according to Metacritic the same goes for Atlus and Sega), but they are still independent, at least for now.

@Ventilator Switch is full of lazy ports and low-budget new games, that's true. And yes, they're presented on Nintendo Directs 😁.

@Banjo- Yeah. hehe. Usually announced out of nowhere in Direct close to release.