Square Enix has claimed the top spot in Metacritic's 16th annual game publisher rankings for the first time in the aggregator's history, breaking through a competitive field dominated by major gaming conglomerates. The Japanese publisher achieved the feat by securing positive critical reviews across its entire 2025 slate, demonstrating a consistency that larger, more diversified publishers could not match.
Square Enix received positive reviews for every one of its 2025 releases whilst increasing its average Metascore by five points compared to the prior year. A variety of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles scored highly for the publisher, while even its "worst" 2025 release, SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered, earned approval from critics.
The rankings highlight a more troubling reality for Sony Interactive Entertainment. Only publishers with five or more distinct titles released last year were included in the rankings, based on a points system calculated from average Metascore, percentage of games scoring at least 75, percentage scoring 49 or lower, and the number of games scoring 90 or higher. By these measures, Sony crumbled. The company dropped from 4th place in 2024 to 21st this year, a decline that raises questions about the quality and velocity of the publisher's output.
More striking than the fall itself is what it reveals about PlayStation's critical reception. Sony's highest-ranked game in 2025 based on Metacritic was The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered on PC, a port of a PlayStation 4 remaster. Death Stranding 2 and Yotei did well critically, but were unable to raise the publisher's ranking due to other underperforming titles and a general lack of big, highly-rated new games.
Nintendo's trajectory moved in the opposite direction. The Kyoto publisher advanced to 12th place, a significant recovery from its 2024 ranking of 22nd. Nintendo released 18 games in 2025 compared to 13 in 2024, and benefited from the Switch 2 launch alongside titles including Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, Mario Kart World, and Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition. Yet even this climb left the company outside the elite tier.
Sega's fall was less dramatic but equally notable. The publisher that claimed the top ranking in 2024 dropped to 7th place despite maintaining an average Metascore of 80. This rotation makes room at the top for genuine surprises: indie specialists DotEmu and Thunderful both cracked the top 10, proving that consistency and critical acclaim matter more than sheer market dominance.
The real question haunting this year's rankings concerns what Sony's slump signals about the broader publishing landscape. The company that dominated in 2023 now lags behind publishers with a fraction of its resources and reach. This is not a story of PlayStation games failing outright; Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2 both earned critical respect. Rather, it reflects a world where releasing fewer, more selective titles leaves a publisher vulnerable to a handful of missteps. For a platform holder accustomed to critical dominance, the numbers are sobering.