Metacritic Names Take Two the Best Publisher of 2010

Sure, Take Two is number 1, but who’s the best of the rest? Metacritic buckled down and compiled a list of the highest, and lowest, rated game publishers of 2010.

Whenever a new game comes out, Metacritic listens to what the professional reviewers have to say, then creates an aggregate score for the game, creating a relatively unbiased way of telling good games from bad. Metacritic decided to apply a similar technique to the people who publish the games

By averaging all the scores of all the games published by all the large and medium-sized publishers last year, Metacritic has produced the 2010 Game Publisher Rankings, a list of who consistently publishes good games, and who, well … doesn’t.

The top 5 big publishers (those who published 15 or more titles last year) and their best games were:

1. Take Two Interactive, with an average rating of 77.1. Highest rated game: Red Dead Redemption – 95
2. Nintendo, with an average rating of 76.1. Highest rated game: Super Mario Galaxy 2 – 97
3. Capcom, with an average rating of 74.5. Highest rated game: Super Street Fighter 4 – 92
4. Microsoft, with an average rating of 73.4. Highest rated game: Halo: Reach – 91
5. Electronic Arts, with an average rating of 72.6. Highest rated game: Mass Effect 2 – 96

The highest rated of the smaller publishers (those who published between 7 and 14 titles) were:

1. Telltale Games, with an average rating of 78.4. Highest rated game: PSN release of Tales of Monkey Island – 86
2. Aksys Games, with an average rating of 73.5. Highest rated game: BlazBlue: Continuum Shift – 87
3. Atlus Co., with an average rating of 72.4. Highest rated game: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable – 91
4. Disney Interactive Studios, with an average rating of 72.4. Highest rated game: Toy Story 3 – 78
5. Xseed Games, with an average rating of 70.3. Highest rated game: Korg DS-10 Plus – 81

I’m really not at all surprised that Take Two took the top spot, what with the of critical successes it had with
Red Dead Redemption and the string of DLC that followed it. The other names in the top 5 are equally predictable.

I also find it rather laudable that Metacritic took the time to give the smaller guys their own category, and recognized the difference in resources they have compared to powerhouses like Microsoft.

To check out the full list and why they received the scores they did, check out the article.