Microsoft is Metacritic’s best publisher of the year

4.4

Do review scores matter? I like to think so when I’m writing reviews, but when people start getting mad about Metacritic scores, it’s best to remember that it’s just a number, maaan. So let’s talk about the happy side of Metacritic scores instead, like the annual celebration of who put out the best-reviewed games of the year.

For 2021, that honour goes to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios division. The company only put out five distinct games this year (one of which was the console port of Microsoft Flight Simulator), but those games reached an average review score of 87.4. Forza Horizon 5, Psychonauts 2, Age of Empires IV, and Halo Infinite made a strong impression. (At least one of them made our Game of the Year list, too.)

Sony comes up in second place with an average review score of 81.3, but with ten distinct games launched this year, maybe that second-place spot isn’t so surprising. (Destruction All-Stars didn’t really help, either.) A load of publishers are just above the 80 point average, including Humble Games, Activision Blizzard, Bethesda Softworks, and Capcom.