Despite the critical acclaim that surrounded The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, Nintendo has had to settle for second place in Metacritic‘s 2018 Game Publisher Rankings.
The reviews aggregator ranks publishers based on four factors: the average Metascore for all games released in 2017; the percentage of scored products with good reviews (a 75 Metascore or over); the percentage of scored products with bad reviews (a 49 Metascore or lower); and the number of great titles (a 90 Metascore or over).
The only games that are excluded from this calculation are those that released on iOS, so, basically, Fire Emblem Heroes and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp don’t count.
It was Bethesda Softworks that denied them first place, with the publisher having released 12 distinct titles in 2017 that collectively held an average 79.9 Metascore. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (88 Metascore) was the company’s best overall release, while DOOM VFR (69 Metascore) was the worst.
In comparison, Nintendo, who improved on their third place in the 2017 Game Publisher Rankings, released 31 distinct titles, with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (97 Metascore) as their best overall release, Snipperclips (80 Metascore) as their best new IP, and Flip Wars (53 Metascore) as their worst overall release.
Metacritic adds that Nintendo was the only publisher to achieve a 90 Metascore or more for three different games last year, which were Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Mario Odyssey, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The last detail they had to share was that the average Metascore for their Nintendo Switch games was 80, whereas it was 75.5 for their Nintendo 3DS games.
