Microsoft Beats Nintendo and Sony in Metacritic's 2026 Publisher Rankings

For the 16th consecutive year, Metacritic has sifted through 12 months of data to rank the year's best and worst game publishers, and the 2026 edition, based on 2025 releases, handed its top spot to Square Enix for the very first time. The bigger platform-war story, though, is buried five spots lower: Microsoft made the top five, beating out the likes of Sony and Nintendo in terms of average Metascores.

Microsoft was in ninth place the year prior, but 2025 yielded a fifth-place finish. With 305.7 points, 81% of Microsoft-published games ended up with a "good" rating, and the catalogue ran 43 products across 21 titles, with Forza Horizon 5 on PS5 scoring 92 to be the pick of the bunch. The irony is hard to ignore: the PlayStation owner came in at 21st place, while the Switch 2 maker landed at 12th, and the other platform holders averaged Metascores of 74 and 77, respectively, against Microsoft's 80.

Metacritic's own write-up on Microsoft's slate acknowledged the strangeness of the situation head-on. Microsoft's ranking was driven in part by Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4, The Outer Worlds 2, and the PS5 releases of Forza Horizon 5 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, while the only real letdowns were Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and the Indiana Jones: The Order of Giants DLC. Metacritic noted that Microsoft's 2025 slate included Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Bethesda's Indiana Jones DLC receiving mixed reviews, but the overall software output remained undeniably strong.

Sony occupied a woeful 21st place with 268.5 points, an almighty collapse from the prior year's report, which revealed Sony as the fourth best-rated publisher of 2024. Of the 17 products across 13 titles Sony published in 2025, only 53% boasted "good" ratings, and the top-rated Sony-published game of the year was a PC release: The Last of Us Part II Remastered, which landed a Metascore of 90. Yes, a PC game led Sony's 2025 slate, as the PlayStation owner continued to port many of its games to Windows. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach and Ghost of Yotei were both well-reviewed but not enough to compensate for weaker performances from Destiny 2 expansions, Lost Soul Aside, and Midnight Murder Club.

Nintendo found a 12th-place finish with 299.2 points and a 68% "good" rating from 19 products across 18 titles, with Tears of the Kingdom on Switch 2 serving as the gem of the crown at a Metascore of 95. Nintendo was buoyed by a couple of Zelda ports for the Switch 2 plus an all-new Donkey Kong game, and was the only publisher to score 90 or higher for more than one of its 2025 titles, jumping 10 spots in the rankings compared to the prior year.

The full top five, with points and average Metascores, looked like this: Square Enix led with 330.5 points, followed by Gamirror Games at 322.4, Capcom at 322.2, Thunderful at 306.8, and Microsoft at 305.7. Gamirror Games, formerly known as Gamera Games, is a Chinese indie publisher credited as co-publisher on a number of PC releases, and in 2025 all five of those titles received positive reviews. Capcom's third consecutive top-three finish was led by its latest Monster Hunter title, with only the PC version of Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny Remaster preventing the publisher from achieving a 100% success rate.

The porting question hangs over the entire list. ResetEra forum users pointed out that Square Enix had virtually no completely new games in its 2025 slate, with its output built primarily on remasters, remakes, and late ports, including Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, and the PC port of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Square Enix received positive reviews for every one of its 2025 releases while increasing its average Metascore by five points compared to the prior year. Metacritic's methodology does factor in the platform version with the strongest aggregate score for each title, which can favor releases with fewer reviews on certain platforms.

Microsoft has now topped this ranking before: Metacritic's historical list of number-one publishers shows Microsoft claimed that top spot in both 2012 and 2022, with Sega, Capcom, and Sony each holding it in more recent years. At fifth place and rising four positions from 2024's rankings, Microsoft's multiplatform push is clearly registering where it counts.