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In its 2022 Game Publisher Rankings, Metacritic has hailed Microsoft as the winner — not an easy feat, especially as the company was at sixth place in 2020.

Metacritic revealed that Microsoft’s average Metascore was 87.4, making it the first time a publisher averaged over 85. The company had put out five definite games in 2021 — Forza Horizon 5, Psychonauts 2, Age of Empires IV, and Halo Infinite.

While all of Microsoft’s titles were rated ‘good’, three of them scored over 90, which is ‘great’ – Forza Horizon 5, Psychonauts 2, and the Xbox Series X version of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Microsoft was followed by Sony with an average Metacritic score of 81.3, with just Destruction AllStars keeping Sony from closing the year with 100 percent “good” games.

Activision Blizzard, surprisingly, finished off the year in the fourth spot, regardless of the continuous controversies, and before being acquired by Xbox.

Nintendo was unable to crack the top 10, finishing in 14th place. Despite the fact that it contained 18 games, none of them was rated ‘great’ although Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury and Metroid Dread came close with scores of 89 and 88 individually.

There are 43 publishers that released five or more games in 2021. Here are the top 10.

• Microsoft/Xbox Game Studios – 87.4 (last year: 6th)
• Sony – 81.3 (last year: 4th)
• Humble Games – 80.9 (last year: 18th)
• Activision Blizzard – 80.6 (last year: 5th)
• Bethesda Softworks – 80.2 (last year: 16th)
• Capcom – 80.6 (last year: third)
• Bandai Namco – 78.5 (last year: 38th)
• Sega – 77.6 (last year: 1st)
• Electronic Arts – 78.3 (last year: 21st)
• 505 Games – 75.7 (last year: 13th)