SEGA Was the Best Publisher of 2020 According to Metacritic
Metacritic ranked the best video game publishers in 2020. SEGA was the clear winner, ahead of Annapurna Interactive and Capcom.
- SEGA has topped Metacritic's list of the best video game publishers in 2020;
- Yakuza, Persona 5: Royal and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim are the main contributors.
SEGA can boast the title of the best publisher of 2020. Metacritic prepared a list that took into account all the games that received enough critical acclaim to boast the official average (user ratings and sales volume of individual games were not taken into account). The Japanese company took the podium by storm, overtaking Annapurna Interactive thanks to great ratings of Yakuza, Persona 5 Royal and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.
How was the list created? First of all, only publishers who released at least five games last year were taken into account. To calculate the score used as the base for the full ranking, the website took:
- The average score of all games released in 2020 (maximum 150 points; 1.5 x Metascore average);
- The percentage of good ratings, which on the site start at 75/100 (maximum 100 points; for example, 80% is 80 points);
- The percentage of bad reviews (max. 100 points; for example, 20% of bad reviews are 80 points);
- The number of games with an excellent rating, which starts at 90/100 (awarded as a bonus 5 points per title).
Also excluded are productions released for iOS devices. So what does the top ten of publishers in 2020 look like?
- SEGA (38 games, average Metascore - 81.6) - 327.2 points
- Annapurna Interactive (15 games, 81.9 average) - 322.9points
- Capcom (15 games, average 80.3) - 313.8points
- Sony (19 games, average 79.8 points) - 308.6points
- Activision Blizzard (15 games, average 79.9) - 306.6points
- Microsoft (26 games, average 78.6) - 293.3points
- Aksys Games (8 games, 76.7 average) - 290points
- No More Robots (7 games, average 77.2 points) - 287.2points
- Nintendo (21 games, average 75.4 points) - 284.7points
- Devolver Digital (22 games, average 74.6 points) - 271points
The full list can be found here (48 publishing companies were classified). Interestingly, the worst in the list is Ultimate Games, which can boast a dizzying game score average of 49.4 (with 8 releases).
Noteworthy is the lower than expected place of Nintendo, eleventh place of Square Enix, fourteenth of Ubisoft and 21 of Electronic Arts, which in 2020 released as many as 32 titles on all platforms. As we can see in this case, quantity did not go hand in hand with quality.
