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Nintendo ranks in the “Top 10” of Metacritic’s 14th Annual Game Publisher Rankings

• Jacob Chambers
• March 25th, 2024

In its latest release, Metacritic unveiled its 14th annual publisher rankings, revealing that Nintendo has secured a spot in the prestigious top 10 for 2023.

With the impressive reception of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and a few other noteworthy titles, Nintendo managed to secure the sixth spot among the 46 publishers on the list. In 2023, it achieved a Metascore of 79.5, having released 22 titles and delivered four exceptional games in total. Last year, it ranked 12th. Here’s the latest assessment from Metacritic:

“Placing yet again in our top 10, Nintendo released more titles than any other publisher on this year’s list. But despite the fact that four of those titles scored 90 or higher—easily the best among all publishers this year—Nintendo was prevented from ranking even higher by its relatively low 73% success rate, which was the lowest among all publishers cracking our top 10.”

Previous year’s rank: 12 (of 45)
Average Metascore: 79.5
22 products (22 titles): 73% good, 0% bad
“Great” games: 4
Best 2023 game: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (NS) 96

First place went to Capcom with Resident Evil 4, then to Raw Fury with Cassette Beasts, and finally to Chorus Worldwide with A Space for the Unbound. Sony’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was in 13th place, Sega’s Persona 4 Golden was in ninth, and Microsoft’s Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition was in 15th.

Dead Space from EA and Blasphemous 2 from Team 17 tied for 16th place. Star Ocean: The Second Story R from Square Enix came in at 19th, Anno 1800 Console Edition from Ubisoft at 23rd, and Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon from Bandai Namco at 27th.

The full list of the top 10 companies is below:

1. Capcom
2. Raw Fury
3. Chrous Worldwide
4. DANGEN Entertainment
5. Annapurna Interactive
6. Nintendo
7. Aksys Games
8. Bethesda Softworks
9. Sega
10. Thunderful

And this is how Metacritic came up with the score:

“Which game publishers released the best games in 2023? For the 14th consecutive year, we sifted through 12 months of data to determine the best and worst game publishers of the year, based solely on the quality of their 2023 releases. 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.

“Publishers are ranked from worst to best in the gallery above based on a points system, calculated (as in previous years) according to the following four factors: Average Metascore for all games released in 2023, % of scored products with good reviews (at least 75), % of scored products with bad reviews (49 or lower), Number of great titles (Metascore of 90 or higher”