Definitely Square-Enix (mainly the Square side). They bring spin-off after spin-off of every single franchise they have or create and never bring anything new or worth to the table. That's some serious cash in for a rehash of an already created game. I liked them better when t hey at least took a few years to develop the new Final Fantasy with a new storyline. It made it worth the wait.

Alot of horrible companies missing from the list that were once uber-companies:

Midway
Great dev in the 90s, but what was the last real good game from them?

Atari
The quientesential developer for the North American market. Now utter crap. Now not even a company on it's own (part of infrogrames, a pretty crappy dev too)

Vivendi Universal
Although they get tons of points for owning Blizzard, they single handedly killed Sierra, and Sierra's various smaller studios (such as Dynamix). Atleast when EA merges with a studio, they try to make good games. Vivendi does not.


And for Japanese developers, I'm going to go out on a limb and list 2:

Sega (I mean c'mon: Sonic, Phantasy Star, Shining Force. How could you wind up like this?!?)

Konami (doesn't get a pass from me. Although SH and MGS are great, it just seems like for as large as they are, they should have more. Definately crappy when compared to other studios of similar origins/size like Namco and Capcom)

Nintendo. The more external first/second parties like NST (Metroid Prime Hunters), AlphaDream (Mario & Luigi), Genius Sonority (GC/Wii Pokemon games), Brownie Brown (Magical Vacation) and Ambrella (Pokemon Dash) all suck to various degrees.

Not that Nintendo is bad; just that everyone expects Nintendo-developed titles to be AAA and most of them are mediocre. Luckily EAD, Retro and Intelligent Systems usually produce awesome games that exceed their hype.

At least they succeed in making quality spin-offs while taking risks constantly.  That doesn't warrant any discredit to them at all.  Besides, The World Ends with You is a great new IP credited with many high reviewed scores for a JRPG.  The Last Remnant and Infinite Discovery will probably be great as well.  

For the bolded part:

You're kidding, right?  FF games are some of the most variated games of all time from each transition in terms of storyline.  While the summary of the games may be the same, the content in the storyline is much different; different settings, characters, villains, problems, backgrounds, personalities, and depth all add to completely different storylines in each FF game. 

"EA" they are the worst developers ever. Monopolising the licenses on Fifa, Madden and NHL has resulted in no innovation and rubbish games year in year out.

@word of wisdom

no it comes from the fact that I brought Ninja Gaiden Sigma...n almost went to sleep while playing it.....

Monopolising of the NHL license? Have you not played or heard of 2K Sports and NHL 2K series? It's been around for a while and is still kicking, regardless of it's inferior quality to EA's NHL series. I hope you also condemn Take Two for monopolising the MLB license with it's highly inferior product to even the last Major League Baseball game from EA.

My answer to the on topic question is Square-Enix. Year after year they continue to amaze me with their downward spiral from the PSOne days.

I'm not sure if the devs you listed are over-rated. Over-rated stands for something that is not that great but is still hyped as being great. Atari, Midway...no one thinks they are great for a long time. Sega also lives off old glory but 90% of the gaming world knows they don't produce great software and reviews show it. (me is sad for sega)

Konami you may have a good point about as they are still being looked at as the elite developer because they made Castlevania SoTN 11 years ago and MGS series. Silent hill hasn't been great for a long time and SH5 most likely won't change that.

I honestly think Nintendo is the most over rated developer. They make good games, but every game released is being treated like a gift from god. They have hypnotized people from their youth to worship Mario.

I want someone to make an experiment where they take a brand new nintendo game (like SMG) and substitue all the characters with no name new characters while keeping the gameplay the same and then ship the game to stores and reviewers. My money says the game gets 75-85% in most reviews and sells million coppies tops. Like I said, still an ok game but not nearly as beloved.

Hence yes...nintendo = overrated!

I agree with senseinobaka, Rare.

Rockstar IMO is overrated, i can't say i've really enjoyed the GTA series too much but I did enjoy Bully.

Oh BTW, Bethesda and Bioware are NOT overrated, maybe Bungie is, but not those two.

As for SquareEnix... they make some crap games as do everyone but they've also made some of the most UNDERrated games of all time, such as Xenogears and Vagrant story.