1. Capcom
Previous year's rank: 5

Scored Releases - 2018 †
Distinct Titles	14
Total Products	30
Average Metascore
79.3	▲ 2.8
Metascore Distribution

2. Sega
Previous year's rank: 3

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	30
Total Products	41
Average Metascore
78.5	▲ 3.0
Metascore Distribution

3. Electronic Arts
Previous year's rank: n/a

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	12
Total Products	30
Average Metascore
77.5	▲ 4.3
Metascore Distribution

4. Nintendo
Previous year's rank: 2

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	30
Total Products	31
Average Metascore
76.4	▼ 1.6
Metascore Distribution

5. Ubisoft
Previous year's rank: 6

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	25
Total Products	42
Average Metascore
73.7	▼ 1.8
Metascore Distribution

6. Sony
Previous year's rank: 7

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	20
Total Products	21
Average Metascore
71.8	▼ 3.1
Metascore Distribution

Previous year's rank: 8

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	25
Total Products	52
Average Metascore
71.0	▼ 2.6
Metascore Distribution

8. Bandai Namco Entertainment
Previous year's rank: 9

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	25
Total Products	44
Average Metascore
71.8	▼ 1.2
Metascore Distribution

9. Digerati Distribution
Previous year's rank: n/a

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	13
Total Products	16
Average Metascore
69.9	▲ 4.7
Metascore Distribution

Previous year's rank: 11

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	17
Total Products	22
Average Metascore
69.5	▲ 1.3
Metascore Distribution

11. Plug In Digital
Previous year's rank: n/a

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	15
Total Products	19
Average Metascore
69.4	▼ 5.9
Metascore Distribution

12. Focus Home Interactive
Previous year's rank: n/a

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	14
Total Products	37
Average Metascore
69.8	▼ 0.5
Metascore Distribution

13. THQ Nordic
Previous year's rank: n/a

Scored Releases - 2018
Distinct Titles	26
Total Products	47
Average Metascore
64.4	▼ 3.8
Metascore Distribution

https://www.metacritic.com/feature/game-publisher-rankings-for-2018-releases

I cant believe SEGA came in second. They better be lucky they got Atlus under their wing. Their biggest hits based on critic opinion were not even developed by them *smh*

EDIT: Nevermind. This is SEGA's 3rd year in the row in the top 3.

In the title do you mean you "wouldn't" leave them either?

Anyways, I feel like a lot of people are going to be mad about this but eh, this kind of ranking is very arbitrary.

The best part about this list is that MS didn't count as a major publisher because they released so few games.

Electronic Arts beating both Nintendo and Sony enfuriates me, what the fuck. I know this is just taking into account metacritic scores, but still...

I hate EA, but their games score on high side. I think they're one of the publishers that don't give their employee's bonuses unless they score higher than an 85 or some shit. 

(Joking)

It's a little odd, yeah, it might just be because EA's number of "distinct titles" is lower. So even though Nintendo and EA have similar total product, EA's games are being rated on a closer scale (example being: Generic EA game #1 gets a 83 on Xbox One and an 85 on PS4, and are rated similarly because they are the same game, making the average rating for EA's total product "higher"). 

No idea why Kirby was rated so badly? Now I'm curious ... 

Darn publishers making good games *shakes fists*

Interesting list to look at, sure, but I'm not going to read much into it beyond that. I don't have a problem with publishers taking chances on games that don't pan out critically. Not everything needs to be for the general audience, either. One of Sony's lowest is a visual novel with 4 reviews total.

I'd rather publishers bring oddball stuff to market rather than just play it safe all the time.

Metacritic counts everything from DLC to re-releases in their averages. If a game gets released on all 3 major consoles, then that counts as 3 games for the purposes of averaging the metacritic score of all the company's games. Their entire methodology is wrong.

For example: All 4 versions of Fe count as a so-so release. Then EA has 3 more sports games with so-so reviews. This means they have 7 so-so games according to metacritic. But that's just dumb. Fe is one game. Not four games. 

They also will count any game so long as it gets 4 reviews. Nevermind that 4 reviews isn't a big enough sample size to get a good idea of the game's overall quality. 

Finally, they use a hidden formula to calculate reviews, giving more credit to some outlets than others. So if your game got a 10/10 from Gamespot (a site owned by metacritic's owners), then your game will stand a much better chance, thanks to Gamespot's reveiws getting more credit on Metacritic.