Metacritic has recently released its 13th annual Game Publisher Rankings. This ranking system is based on the best video game releases from various publishers in 2022. Sony Interactive Entertainment, and of course, PlayStation, has claimed the top spot on the list this year. It has outperformed most of the biggest names in the industry, including Paradox Interactive, Activision Blizzard, Focus Entertainment, and Take-Two Interactive.
In the previous year, Sony Interactive Entertainment released a series of beloved games for consoles, such as God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part 1, Horizon Forbidden West, Spiderman, and Gran Turismo. PlayStation also released some of the aforementioned games again on PC later down the line.
To rank the publishers, Metacritic employed a point system that considered four different factors. The average Metascore of each publisher’s games carried the most weight. However, the percentage of games with positive reviews (75 or higher), the percentage of games with negative reviews (49 or lower), and the number of “great” games released (90 or higher) were also taken into account.
Sony Was Metacritic’s Highest-Rated Publisher in 2022
To be eligible for the rankings, a publisher needed to have released five or more distinct titles in 2022. As a result, Microsoft, the previous year’s winner, missed out on the ranking due to a relatively quiet year, again. Microsoft had decided long ago that making new IPs was too risky, and so, decided to buy their way into the competition again, something that is still underway.
Here is a list of the top 10 publishers along with their average Metascore for last year:
- 1) Sony Interactive Entertainment – 85.6 (last year: 2nd)
- 2) Paradox Interactive – 81.6 (last year: n/a)
- 3) Activision Blizzard – 76.5 (last year: 4th)
- 4) Focus Entertainment – 80 (last year: 17th)
- 5) Take-Two – 78.9 (last year: 27th)
- 6) Capcom – 78.6 (last year: 6th)
- 7) Sega – 79.3 (last year: 8th)
- 8) Annapurna Interactive – 79.2 (last year: 18th)
- 9) Humble Games – 76.8 (last year: 3rd)
- 10) Devolver Digital – 78.3 (last year: 11th)
The complete list of all the publishers who made the list is available here. Some of the most notable publishers that didn’t make the top 10 include Nintendo at No.12, EA at No.17, Bandai Namco at No.24, and Ubisoft at the back at No.38.