Exactly. Also, staff is completely irrelevant. I could gather every student in Berkeley and starts a game publishing company and we would instantly be #1 despite the fact that we would only publish "Super Barbie Adventures 3: The return of daddy's credit card."

A publisher's standing tends to be in capital (cash) not employees. Developers do all of the hard work and publishers take the financial risk of getting copies made, distributed and marketed. Few publishers have involvement in development, unless they are a combined developer/publisher like practically all the big ones are.

So you really want the biggest console game company (in terms of revenue from console businesses and employees in developing or publishing). Nintendo, Sony, EA, Activision and Capcom would probably be the top five.

I think that one thing is clear out of this topic : talking about the "biggest company" doesn't mean anything ^_^

Some people will say that market capitalization means everything, other will talk about revenue, about number of products or employees etc...

Nintendo is definitely number 1 on my list. The other four would be Sony, Microsoft, Take-Two Interactive, Sega, and THQ.

mattering if we are talking number of employees or revenue Valve Corp is in this list

Nintendo
Vivendi Games
Electronic Arts
Ubisoft
Sony Computer Entertainment.

Oops, I just noticed that I placed Vivendi 3rd. Vivendi is 2nd. This is the official list for late 2008. I am not sure if things have changed since then but I doubt it.

Why do people have the impression that Capcom is a big publisher (or developer)?

How many milly sellers have they had in the last three years? DMC 4, Resident Evil for Wii, Dead Rising and perhaps a DS game or two.

Capcom is nowhere near the top 5.

1. Nintendo
2. Activision/Blizzard
3. EA
4. Sony?
5. Konami
6. Ubisoft
7. SEGA
8. Square Enix

And according to Wikipedia and Edge top 20 ranking, Capcom doesn't even belong to the top 10:
http://www.edge-online.com/features/edges-top-20-publishers-2008?page=0%2C8

So it looks like:
 
9. Take-Two
10. THQ
11. MS?
12. Capcom

Also, Capcom's staff is only a lil bit over 1000 people.  Ubisoft and Sqyare Enix have over 3,000, Take-Two has 2000, THQ has 1600.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_publisher

Below are the top 20 video game publishers, ranked by Game Developer in October 2008, in order of overall score in six factors: annual turnover, number of releases, average review score, quality of producers, reliability of milestone payments and the quality of staff pay and perks.[2] Note that this is not a ranking by revenue, but of the quality of experience of working with the publishers according to staff, and some video game development companies. Codemasters is new to the list, bumping Atlus off the list. This is the final year for Activision and Vivendi Games to have separate listings, as the merger happened after the discussed timeframe.

2008
1 Nintendo
2 Electronic Arts
3 Activision
4 Ubisoft
5 Sony Computer Entertainment
6 Take-Two Interactive
7 Sega Sammy Holdings/Sega of America
8 THQ
9 Microsoft Game Studios
10 Square Enix
11 Konami
12 Vivendi Games
13 Namco Bandai Games
14 Capcom
15 NCSoft
16 Disney Interactive Studios
17 LucasArts
18 Codemasters
19 Eidos Interactive
20 Midway Games

Something like Nintendo. EA. Ubisoft. Activision. SONY/SEGA

One thing people seem to be forgetting, Vivendi needs to be on that list, not Activision Blizzard. Vivendi includes Activision Blizzard + some other companies.