Metacritic ranks EA as 2012's best major publisher
By
Martin Gaston, News Editor
EA bests Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo in Metacritic's publisher rankings, with Take-Two taking top honors in midsized publisher list.
Metacritic has ranked Electronic Arts as the best major publisher of 2012, with the critic-aggregating service reporting that Mass Effect 3 was EA's best-reviewed title with a Metascore of 93.
EA has jumped up four places in Metacritic's charts since last year, overtaking Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo--second, third, and fourth in the chart respectively.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter, which received a 6.0 in its GameSpot review, was EA's worst-performing title on Metacritic, with a Metascore of 53. EA has subsequently retired the series, though it maintains that critics were too harsh on the first-person shooter.
Metacritic also calculated a chart for what it deemed midsized publishers, which featured Borderlands 2 publisher Take-Two, Hitman: Absolution-owning Square Enix, and the Skyrim-toting Bethesda Softworks, amongst others.
Metacritic calculated its placement based on attributing a number of points to each publisher, starting with 1.5 times the average Metascore of its 2012 titles. It then added up to 100 points based on the percentage of games which received a good (75-89 Metascore) rating, subtracting up to 100 points based on the percentage of games which received a bad (20-49 Metascore) rating, and adding a 10-point bonus for every game which received a great (90-100 Metascore) rating.
Metacritic's third annual rankings for major publishers (and average Metascore):
Major publishers:
1. EA (75.2)
2. Microsoft (73.0)
3. Sony (72.3)
4. Nintendo (71.2)
5. Capcom (70.4)
6. Warner Bros. (70.6)
7. Ubisoft (68.2)
8. Konami (69)
9. Sega (69.9)
10. Activision Blizzard (64.4)
11. Namco Bandai (62.5)
Midsized publishers:
1. Take-Two Interactive (83.1)
2. Telltale Games (83.9)
3. Square Enix (75.2)
4. Bethesda Softworks (74.3)
5. THQ (73.7)
6. Atlus (69.8)
7. XSEED (66.8)
8. Paradox Interactive (62.1)
9. Focus Home Interactive (60.5)
10. 505 Games (53.3)
Note: Metacritic is owned by GameSpot's parent company, CBS Interactive.
By
Martin Gaston, News Editor
Martin Gaston has absolutely never at all had the song from Beauty and the Beast sung to him at any point during his life, ever.
187 comments
EA publishes their stuff on Sony Nintendo and Microsoft systems and they still become the best? That's ironic.
I'd say they're the best fanatic money hunters or something, but definitively not the best publisher, yay!
How much did you pay them EA? Forget publishing, you guys are the worst scum of the gaming world in history. Shame on you and your derivative money making scam.
Isn't it amusing to watch people come up with desperate justifications for a publisher they don't approve of getting the highest rating of 2012?
It only makes yourself look pathetic when you insist that no, it couldn't have been that they simply published good games, it has to be that they paid Metacritic off!
*tsk tsk*
3 Like I think we're all getting slightly confused here folks.. This list goes on the average rating of the games.
I hate EA as much as the next person, but that's because of their marketing strategy and how they treat their customers. The games themselves and the developers which work for them are actually decent.
Don't bash the games, bash the company!
1 Like @warhawk-geeby Good point. Do the complainers even understand how Metacritc works? It is fairly transparent and calculates a score based on reviews from other sites - paying Metacritic would get you nothing. Also, mid-sized publisher is not an insult, it is based on numbers. Take-Two's score was actually significantly better than EA. Try a little logic and common sense people. BTW I am definitely not an EA fan.
You KNOW there's something wrong when EA, Activision and Crapcom top a "best" list. And how can someone say Telltale Games is one of the best, when they've only released a title a year? Your judging an entire company based on The Walking Dead?
Congratulation EA, MS, Sony, Capcom, Konami, ActivisionBlizzard, Namco Bandai all of u well deserve for that. Thanks there is no crappy Valve
I always though that Take-Two is a major, due to their NBA 2K series that made NBA LIVE EXTINCT! When did Square Enix become a midsize after all the years of immense RPG and all the Final Fantasy's you can name?
And Bethesda? After all the Elder Scrolls experience since my childhood? And having the reputation of the most fan-loved, modded game in the name of Skyrim?
WHAT IS HAPPENING? TELL ME PLEASE????????????? ;-/
' It then added up to 100 points based on the percentage of games which received a good (75-89 Metascore) rating' Checked them and yes games get an individual score and also my point is how many games did square release last year do u no Check your facts because this MID SIZED developer released a lot more games that did well than warner bros so the why are they a mid sized i think il trust the world market and game sales and sites like this that actually play the game and show us how they are not just throw numbers at us so idiots with to much money will run out and buy what they want u to
1 Like And my Favourites are EA and Atlus :D
I still like EA even if they give DLc or DRM bullshit, To me it's no big deal... As long i have fun and don't spend much... i dn't know how you Muricans Spend your money on games and DLC, But EA is really Fair in my country... alot of free stuff.. and EA is repected here.
And i like Atlus :P
1 Like This has to be some kind of joke from Metacritic. Well EA in my book will always be one of the worst publishers in the world with Activison Blizzard, Crapcom, and Square Enix.
There are a few (or a combination of a few) possibilities behind this,
1: Reviewers are bought off.
2: Reviewers have no standards.
3: Metacritic screwed up somewhere.
4: 2012 was a REALLY crappy year for gaming.
Also, 3 comes into play in that they don't have Take-Two or SE listed as Major Publishers.
1 Like @Vorexum It's based on the number of games they release each year. Although Take Two puts out amazing games, they only put out a handful of games each year. So, yes, they are a mid-sized publisher.
@Vorexum 2K owns NBA 2k, XCOM, BioShock, and Civilization. So much for making EA look so big and powerful and making 2k look "mid-sized" metacritic! You stay Classy Metacritic!!
2 Like The reason why Ea is number one is because they dish out alot of games, just think about it..NCAA, MADDEN,PGA TOUR,NEED FOR SPEED,BATTLEFIELD,DEAD SPACE ,FIFA,MASS EFFECT...Its hard to ignore..but i do agree that they milk money out of the consumers with pointless dlcs...ahhh i wish it was like back then..you bought the game and it had all the content on the disc no bs dlc.
@marting265 The Metacritic publisher rating is based on an *average* of all of the publisher's games. Having *more* games does not automatically make a publisher more likely to have a higher score.
1 Like Sorry, Metacritic but this is COMPLETE GARBAGE!! Madden is overrated, NHL and NCAA are monpolized by EA, Medal of Honor was canned because it was ruined buy EA trying to compete with COD, BioWare games are now bad because of EAs constant meddling and on top of that SimCity which I grew up loving with the Sim City 2000 is now nothing but a City Simulator MMO that you don't OWN! EA is now with Dead Space 3 saying that the PC is a DEAD PLATFROM as a development AAA title maker in terms of making money for EA and in terms of saying the same to other companies. BAD BAD BAD did you forget where you came from back in the 80's?!?! In other news Sony should be the number one in this debate, just look at MLB The Show and Gran Tursimo in sports, Uncharted, Resistance, and Killzone in FPS, and of course God of War! If Sony HAD these games for PC they WOULD BE NUIMBER 1!! Metacritic is SO BIASED TWOARDS THE XBOX 360 IT'S SICKENING!!!
@TitanPolaris You realize this is for 2012? Gran Turismo or Killzone didn't come out in 2012.
@96augment @TitanPolaris Ok I stand corrected on those games, but I don't think that EA diserved this rating. To me this is all about Mass Effect 3 and nothing else they released in 2012 to me at all. If is isn't EA then it should Square-Enix or Activision, if you like COD, or Sleeping Dogs. The problem I have with EA is with the way they handle the NFL license and destroy long time favorites I like a.k.a SimCity, MOH, and BioWare games they own. They put in DRM and now "always on-line" even in single player mode for their games, just look at what they did to Command & Conquer 4! They are doing this to SimCity now, and whats to stop them from doing this to a game like Dragon Age? Mass Effect 3 was disaster in my eyes for not getting the "best ending" without doing the MP portion of the game. This was just as bad White Knight Chronicles for the PS3, SP/MMO RPGs are not a good way to get long time SP RPG fans to buy your games in the future if you are EA or any other company in my mind. I'm old so I have no intention of doing MP in RPGs ( I grew up on RPGs like Fallout and Final Fantasy) at all. Now they are making SimCity a MMO, which is just not right for a long time fan like I am! I just don't like having other players playing the game and EA spying on me when I want to play alone. To me MP should be A CHOICE NOT A RECUIREMENT!!
@TitanPolaris Did you get the extended edition for Mass Effect 3? With it, you don't have to play multiplayer to get the best ending. "EA spying on me"? Huh? Well, there are plenty of people who don't like EA or Activision. However, it seems that for every 1 person that hates EA, there are ten people that like and buy EA games.
If you don't like what EA does, don't buy their games. It's all I can tell you.
@TitanPolaris I Agree Sony does a great job with the games they put out..but since they are exclusives they over look that
@marting265 @TitanPolaris Ok so they don't overlook Halo, and Gears of War!?!?! I SCREAM BIAS!!
@marting265 @TitanPolaris I think that Metacirtic is US biased in some from or another. The Last of Us looks like it could rival The Uncharted series!! I wonder what the people in other parts of the world think about this Metacirtic rating that they gave EA? EA makes alot of "cookie-cutter" and retreads like Madden. The M$ rating in second place is also eyebrow rasing to me as Halo is there only ace in the hole in my eyes.
@beuneus12 @TitanPolaris Yep I am, because the xbox destroyed the PC as a platform that the developers respected as a viable platform for making a profit for them. There doing a great disservice to the PC and the people that love the PC as I do, by putting always On-Line even for single player games like SimCity, because they are putting the screws to people like me that have a slow internet connection, and I have a cap limit on the usage of the connection I have. I'm also not made of money, what they did to SimCity, and Dead Space 3 was ascnine in my opinon. By saying that you are not making any improvements to the PC version of Dead Space 3 over the console versions and making me pay $70 for the game is just to much for me to handle without blowing my stack. As far as SimCity is concerned, you have a much more inferior version of the game this time around again, just like SimCity Societies! Just go to the Simtrpolis website and you can see how the fans of the series consistanly bitch about the DRM and city size limitations compared to Sim City 4.and no modding this time around, even SimCity Societies had THIS!!
The Xbox to me is just a excuse for M$ to charge for On-Line Gaming via Xbox Live and getting game publishers and developers to make more money and make a more inferior product that they are doing not as opposed to when they using the PC as the central development platform for making games. When the Xbox 360 came out games went from $50 to $70 with tax, and then EA really showed there true colors with the sports games like Madden, meaning the new engine they used for the next gen consoles at that time was not used for the PC ports of the games, they used PS2 ports of the game instead. All in all the xbox is just a money grab for M$, I believe in free internet gaming, $50 price tags for AAA Games AND NO DRM AT ALL!!
2 Like @redluigi11 I'm so tired of hearing this excuse over and over. It happens every time a movie/game/ANY form of media gets good reviews... If you don't agree that's fine, but obviously no one paid off Metacritic for this...cmon people use your brains. I'm sure EA doesn't even know this ranking exists.
7 Like The same company that was voted Worst Company last year or something?
People are sick indeed.
@Roger_Smith By roughly 60,000 people.
Yep, some people really think that less than 0.2% of America speaks for everyone.
@LilyxLightning @Roger_Smith If the people that support EA don't speak, they have no voice, therefore, what they think doesn't count. If you're going to complain about something (in this case, complain about the people that dislike EA) but not do anything about it, do the world a favor and STFU. If you don't think EA deserved the title, then you should've gone on the site and voted for someone else.
@LesserAngel @LilyxLightning @Roger_Smith So if a question isn't asked to people who *support* something, then their opinion doesn't matter. You're saying that people who *don't* think EA is a bad company should have slandered another company, which is mind-numbingly stupid.
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