Bethesda and Nintendo Top Metacritic’s List of Best 2017 Publishers

Microsoft and EA both got bumped down to the mid-sized publishers list, on the other hand.

2017 was a fantastic year for video games, and we got so many masterpieces all across the board- but some companies ended up performing better over the year than others. In 2017, according to popular reviews aggregator Metacritic, Bethesda ended up emerging as the highest rated publisher in the industry across the board, with a staggering 79.9 average score.

They ended up edging out Nintendo, who had a bumper year, but ended up with a score of 78, which puts them in second place. Nonetheless, Metacritic does note that Nintendo managed this score with more games scored than anyone else (32 in total!), which is truly an impressive feat.

Elsewhere, EA and Microsoft both ended up not qualifying for the “large publishers” list (which mandates at least 12 products scored on Metacritic on minimum), and were instead bumped down to the “mid-size publishers” list; meanwhile, Sony got plaudits for introducing the highest rated new IP of last year with Horizon: Zero Dawn.

In the end, it was a great year for all.

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