Metacritic’s existence has been a valuable tool for gamers looking to assess the quality of a game quickly based on aggregated review scores. While the site still has its fair share of problems — especially concerning user reviews, which do not require proof of game ownership — it remains a reliable guide for evaluating game quality. Recently, Metacritic released its data on the best publishers of 2024, with SEGA taking the top spot.
The decision on the top publisher is not based on sales figures or user reviews but rather on the average review scores of the games they published. Based on this metric, the Japanese gaming giant secured the top spot as the best publisher of 2024.
This is off the back of a very successful 2024 for SEGA. A combination of critically acclaimed titles such as Metaphor: ReFantazio, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance significantly boosted SEGA’s overall score. The publisher achieved a quite impressive average Metacritic score of 82.9. However, not all of its releases were hits, with SEGA’s lowest-rated game of 2024 being Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Sweep the Board!.
Following SEGA in the rankings, the second to fifth-place publishers were Capcom, Aksys Games, Sony, and Focus Entertainment. Each of these companies also released several standout titles throughout the year. For Sony, despite the strong performance of Astro Bot, its overall average score was dragged down by the poor reception of its failed live-service game, Concord.
With many highly anticipated game releases set for 2025, it will be interesting to see which publisher will claim the title of Metacritic’s best publisher next year. SEGA has already pushed out Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and will hopefully have more titles coming that could easily see it top the charts once more.
