Summary
- Sega earns the top spot in Metacritic’s 15th Annual Game Publisher Rankings.
- Rankings are based solely on critics’ scores.
- Sega beat Capcom by a slim margin, while Nintendo placed 22nd on the list.
Metacritic has crowned Sega as the best video game publisher of 2024, making it a record third win for the publisher in Metacritic’s Annual Game Publisher Rankings. With games like Metaphor: ReFantazio, Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance, and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth all getting high scores, Sega was a clear winner.
Related
TheGamer’s Game Of The Year – 2024
With 36 different staff from TheGamer voting, this is our ultimate Game of the Year list.
This ranking is based purely on the Metacritic scores of games put out by publishers, with sales figures and user reviews not taken into account. Data is collected over a 12-month period for every publisher in order to evaluate their performance and place them on the overall list. Only publishers with five or more distinct titles released in 2024 made the overall list.
In case you’re wondering how the scoring system works, Metacritic has broken it down:
(1) Average Metascore for all games released in 2024
150 possible points (awarded at 1.5 x the average Metascore)
(2) % of scored products with good reviews (Metascore of at least 75)
100 possible points (ex: 80% good = 80 points)
(3) % of scored products with bad reviews (49 or lower; in this case, a lower % is better)
100 possible points (ex: 20% bad = 80 points)
(4) Number of “great” titles (Metascore of 90 or higher, min. 7 reviews)
Awarded as 5 bonus points for each distinct title with a 90+ score
With Metaphor: ReFantazio getting 94, Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance getting 87, and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth getting 89, Sega beat the competition to rank first, previously winning in 2021 and 2016.
In second place, by barely two points, is last year’s winner Capcom, with Dragon’s Dogma 2 leading the charge, and smaller titles supporting it with high scores as well. Aksys Games is the surprise of the year, thanks to high scores for Spirit Hunter: Death Mark and positive reviews for all five of its 2024 releases.
Sony and Focus Entertainment take the third and fourth spot, with Astro Bot and Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2 as their flagships. Microsoft sits all the way at ninth spot, with the best reviewed game being the Switch port of Pentiment. Unsurprisingly, Starfield‘s Shattered Space DLC was its lowest performer.
2024 wasn’t a great year for Nintendo as it ranked 22nd on the list – not surprising, since Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was its biggest release, and it’s probably holding off the big guns for the imminent Switch 2 launch.
Sega
- Date Founded
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June 3, 1960
- CEO
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Hajime Satomi
- Subsidiaries
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Sonic Team, Rovio, Relic Entertainment
- Headquarters
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Shinagawa City, Tokyo, Japan