It’s almost the holiday season! As many of you reading this know, that’s the time of the year in gaming where everything goes bonkers and great games are released week after week. We figured that now is probably the last chance we will have to take a step back, and calmly look at how this year has gone for some of the biggest companies in gaming. So, let’s rank some publishers shall we?
Let’s kick this off with a couple of important notes. First, we only ranked publishers that have at least three games that we (Twinfinite, no one else is factoring in here) reviewed so far in 2018. If it was less than that, we threw them out for this ranking. Later in the year, when we do this ranking again, that could change. Second, these rankings are determined by an average of our scores that we gave games that they published ranked out of five. See our review rubric and policy for more information. Also, these are ranked purely based on our review scores which are based on the opinion of the specific author who wrote the review, and does not necessarily reflect everyone on the staff’s opinion. When determining these rankings, we’re not considering factors such as how Sea of Thieves has grown since release. It’s just straight average score at the time that the review went out.
Finally, remember these are publisher, not developer rankings. A game like Octopath Traveler was developed by Square Enix, but was published by Nintendo in North America.
Without further ado, let’s jump in.
9th: Microsoft – Review Average: Fair
Best Video Game Publishers: Pre-Holidays Average Score Rankings
Notable Releases: Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2
Now, to be fair to Microsoft, who starts off this list in last place out of the nine eligible publishers that we ranked, the disappointing Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, dragged their score down pretty hard. Sea of Thieves and State of Decay 2 weren’t killer apps, but Microsoft would have been at least a little higher on this ranking if it wasn’t for AoE.
Luckily, Microsoft has Forza Horizon 4 on the way, which looks incredible so far based on what we’ve seen and played. It will probably give Microsoft a boost back up the rankings when we redo them at the end of the year.
