The difference in unique titles and total products results from multi-platform releases for example, if LEGO Call of Duty: Arkham City-A Telltale Games Series comes out on the PS4, XB1, and PC, that counts as 3 total products but just one unique title.

† Scored products are the number of products released last year with at least four reviews from professional critics (which is the minimum needed to have a Metascore calculated) iOS games are not included. ** Out of games with at least 25 user reviews. Not part of or related to an existing game or series The publisher released just one game for current-gen consoles: the middling, Sonic-influenced cartoonish platformer Tembo the Badass Elephant. Before you get too excited about Sega's success, note that half of its 2015 titles were new 3D re-releases of older games for the 3DS platform. The company ranked 5th among mid-sized publishers a year ago (it released fewer titles in 2014) and saw its average score increase by four points in this year's results, even without any releases scoring 90 or higher. Sega is the sole major publisher in this year's rankings to finish the year with a 'green' average Metascore indicating that, on average, its 2015 releases were approved by critics. Here is how the major publishers stacked up based on the quality of their 2015 releases: 1. (Detailed scoring information appears in a table below the rankings.) In addition, note that iOS games are not included in the figures below. Note that the Metascore average (the first factor) counts slightly more than the other factors.

Number of 'great' titles (Metascore of 90 or higher, min.

% of scored products with bad reviews ( 49 or lower in this case, a lower % is better).

% of scored products with good reviews (Metascore of at least 75).

Average Metascore for all games released in 2015.

We have ranked these publishers in order from best overall game quality to worst, using a formula based on four factors: (Publishers with 5 or fewer unique titles are excluded.) The remaining 'mid-size' publishers each released between 6-13 unique titles last year.

Our first group consists of the largest publishers, who each issued 14 or more unique titles (with Metascores) during 2015. We split publishers into two separately ranked groups, based on the number of games they released during the last calendar year. (Merely looking for a list of 2015's highest-scoring games? Find that here.) Ranking of major publishers Sales and user reviews do not factor into these rankings only critic reviews (as captured by each game's Metascore) are used to evaluate performance.įind previous game publisher rankings here:Ģ014 releases / 2013 / 2012 / 2011 / 2010 Which game publishers released the best games over the past year? In our annual tradition, we have sifted through 12 months of data to determine the best and worst game publishers of the past year, based solely on the quality of their 2015 releases.

Ranking best video games 2016