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Top 20 Game Publishers

Posted by Zonk on from the you're-the-tops dept.

Patrick Caldwell writes "Game Developer magazine recently released a list of the top 20 video game publishers. EA, Activision, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are the first five, as could probably have been predicted." From the article: " For the third year in a row, Electronic Arts (EA) has grabbed the top slot on the "Top 20 Publishers" chart. EA reached an annual revenue of more than $3.1 billion, continued high output and received positive average reviews for its titles. However, the company faced some serious competition from fellow publishers like Activision, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, all of whom had very strong showings this year and rounded out the top 5 in that order."

2 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Human resources? by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder whether these companies' HR departments are going to be slashdotted with resumes from unemployed homebrew game developers now.

  2. Re:'Top' Publishers. Right... by Ghost_MH · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Before anything else, I would hardly call Game Developers a "gaming magazine". The magazine is very clearly not for gamers, so what gamers care about is not important here.

    Now, with that said...

    EA is a horrible company to deal with, but you can't say the quality of EA's games are heading down the crapper. EA's games averaged 81% in a Rotten Tomatoes-esque review of all the games they had released in the last year. The only companies in the top twenty that beat EA here were LucasArts with 81.6% and Microsoft with 80.56%. Even if you don't particularly like their games a LOT of people do and you can't hold that against EA.

    Also, this has little to do with money made...Were that the case it would be EA first and Nintendo second. The first year Game Developer compiled this list, they went with profit..After that they went with a score based system.

    Actually, I have the magazine here, so I'll just post their explanation...
    The Game Developers Top 20 ranks publishers using a score calculated from each publisher's performance in several measures. First, a list of the top 30 publishers is drawn up based on revenue or, when revenue data is unavailable, estimates.

    Then each publisher is given a score based on the following six measures - annual turnover; number of releases; average review score; quality of producers; reliability of milestone payments; and the quality of staff pay and perks.

    Annual turnover figures come from the publisher's annual accounts or, when these are not public, from out own estimates based on the sales of games they release. The number of releases, which counts the publication of the same game on different formats as separate releases, come from the publishers or, when they were unable to provide this information, from their web sites and dedicated gaming sites. The average review score ratings were based on information from gamerankings.com. A confidential survey of developers provided data for the quality of producers, reliability of of milestone payments, and the pay and perks.

    The top 30 publishers were ranked according to each of the six measures. The lowest scoring publisher received a score of one, the next lowest a score of two and so on until the highest scoring publisher received a rating of 30. This was repeated for all measures and totals were weighted and added together to give a final score which determined the Top 20 Publishers list for 2005.

    Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy of the information contained within the article. But we cannot guarantee its accuracy or completeness. We do not accept liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss arising from its use.

    Anyways, EA's scores looked something like this...
    126 releases
    17% externally developed titles
    8.52 Producer Rating
    8.50 Milestone Payment Rating
    8.91 Pay and Perks
    81 Average Review Score

    I'm not going to go down the list, but the top five were...

    Activision...
    76 releases
    63% externally developed titles
    9.25 Producer Rating
    9.60 Milestone Payment Rating
    9.40 Pay and Perks
    65.4 Average Review Score

    Microsoft...
    20 releases
    60% externally developed titles
    9.60 Producer Rating
    9.85 Milestone Payment Rating
    10 Pay and Perks
    80.56 Average Review Score

    Nintendo...
    69 releases
    32% externally developed titles
    8.50 Producer Rating
    10 Milestone Payment Rating
    8.50 Pay and Perks
    76.08 Average Review Score

    Sony Computer Entertainment...
    41 releases
    37% externally developed titles
    9.18 Producer Rating
    9.55 Milestone Payment Rating
    8.50 Pay and Perks
    75.07 Average Review Score