Metacritic is a review aggregator site, which gathers around all the reviews and grades for video games, from critics and public alike. At the end of each year, this site makes a yearly ranking of video game publishers, showing how well each company performed during the previous year, based on review scores.

For the sake of objective ranking, the publishers were divided into two categories, major and mid-sized. To qualify as a major publisher, the company must have released 12 or more games in 2018, while the mid-sized number of games is 5-11. Apart from that categorization, the lists are based purely on the quality of each publisher’s games. Determining categories are qualifying critics scores, and sales and user reviews are not counted in the total result. Except for the average review score, there are other factors that affect the ranking, like the number of high-scoring and low-scoring releases for each publisher. So there are the most successful publishers in 2018 according to Metacritic data.

Capcom — 79.3 Sega — 78.5 EA — 77.5 Nintendo — 76.4 Ubisoft — 73.7 Sony — 71.8 Square Enix — 71.0 Bandai Namco — 71.8 Digerati Distribution — 69.9 NIS America — 69.5 Plug In Digital — 69.4 Focus Home Interactive — 69.8 THQ Nordic — 64.4

According to the list, Capcom was the best ranking publisher, which is a great jump from the 5th place in 2017. The best overall release of Capcom is Monster Hunter: World, while Metacritic users’ favorite was Okami HD on Switch. This is the major exception, considering that publishers are usually moving up or down one spot. Monster Hunter World is Capcom’s best selling game in history, and 2019 also started amazingly for Capcom, due to the great success of Resident Evil 2 remake.

The best midsize publisher is Activision Blizzard, with an average Metascore of 77,4, which is better than Nintendo (placed fourth on the major rankings) and all the publishers below. This might be the last year Activision Blizzard took the top ranking considering the turmoils in the company and losing the license for Destiny which is gone with the Bungie studio.

All in all, there are no big surprises in the rankings. Capcom established dominance in the market with its superb games, while other publishers slightly changed their status on the list. Considering that Capcom has the biggest hit in January, it looks like the dominance will continue.