Sega scores Metacritic publisher win as Nintendo and Electronic Arts fail to break top 20

Metacritic has published its list of the top game publishers for games released in 2024. The site used a specific points system for scoring the publishers based on solely critic review scores, with games that were considered “great” (a score of 90 or higher with at least seven reviews posted) receiving an additional five bonus points. Retail sales figures for games and reviews from the site’s users did not factor into this particular ranking. Multiple hardware platforms are included but mobile games are excluded. This was Metacritic’s 15th annual rankings, with giants like Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft being winners in the past.

Holding up the rankings (see table below) was Fulqrum Publishing in 37th position on 219.1 points. Atari comes in at 31st place, Bandai Namco grabs 27th, and Konami claims 25th spot before two big hitters appear to come up short for 2024. Electronic Arts stumbles into 23rd place and Nintendo, which has been a previous winner and was in sixth place last year, has to make do with 22nd. Electronic Arts' highest-reviewed game of the year was The Sims 4: Life & Death (PC, 86) but Madden NFL 25 (PS5, 70) and NHL 25 (PS5, 66) weren’t so liked. In fact, the user scores for those last two games were a low 3.1 and 3.0, respectively.

It wasn’t just Electronic Arts putting up with a poor showing in 2024, with Nintendo surprisingly stalling here. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Switch) did well with a score of 88, but The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch) "only" has 85 – most Zelda games on the site hit over 90, with Ocarina of Time (N64, 1988) managing 99 (3DS version available on Amazon). However, this is likely the result of the Big N taking things a little slower in 2024, as the release of the Switch 2 and its accompanying heavy-hitting titles this year will undoubtedly help Nintendo move to a much higher position in next year's ranking.

Ubisoft actually improved over the year, from 23rd to 18th, and former two-time champions Take-Two Interactive also enjoyed gains, moving from 25th to 12th. The top five positions, from worst to best, were taken by Focus Entertainment, Sony, Aksys Games, Capcom, and Sega. Sega was ninth in the last rankings, so it has titles like Metaphor: ReFantazio (PS5, 94), Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance (PS5, 87), and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5, 89), to thank for its rise. Sega also won in 2016 and 2021, with the site pointing out it is the first publisher to top the rankings on three occasions.