Xbox Game Studios was the Highest Rated Publisher in 2021 on Metacritic - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 09 March 2022 / 3,135 Views
Metacritic as part of its "12th Annual Game Publisher Rankings" has revealed Xbox Game Studios was the highest rated publisher in 2021. This is up from sixth place in 2020.
Xbox Game Studios had 10 scored products with five distinct titles. The publisher had an average Metascore for 2021 of 87.4 with three "Great" games.
"It is very rare for a publisher to average above 80 for its releases across a single calendar year," reads the post from Metacritic. "But how often does a company average above ? Never ... until this year.
"Our runaway winner of this year's Publisher of the Year honors, Microsoft certainly published fewer titles in 2021 than it does in a typical year. But what games it did publish were uniformly excellent, making Microsoft the only publisher with a 100% success rate.
Three different titles scored or higher (also tops among all publishers): the latest Forza Horizon racer, a sequel to Psychonauts, and the Xbox Series X version of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Their successes almost make Halo Infinite seem like a disappointment with a mere .
"Can Microsoft maintain its quality control once Activision Blizzard is welcomed into the fold? Stay tuned."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Thanks for linking it right to the relevant page, I hate articles that make you click the next page link 31 times to get to the winners page. Great year for Microsoft, and it didn't even mention Deathloop and it's 88 average review score.
Yeah, Bethesda was ranked 5th and is still viewed as a separate publisher. Seeing the releases this year, at least so far, Bethesda may end up ranking higher than XGS this time next year lol
Fun fact, MS also owns Bethesda, which for some reason was ranked separately from MS as the fifth best publisher, and will soon own Act/Bliz, the fourth ranked publisher. So basically GamePass wins.
Congrats to Microsoft. Way to turn things around!
Bloody GamePass ruining our quality games.. oh wait, it isnt. But people on the internet said it would.
Comparing 5 games to 10. Seems fair.
XGS had 10 total releases in 2021 that had a rating on Metacritic, but 5 of them were just that high. Age of Empires IV was part of those 10 releases, but it had a lower score of 81 on Metacritic. I imagine the rest were DLC or expansions of some sort that got their own Metacritic rating.
Can't comment on the second part lol but Xbox Game Studios is the overall brand name for Microsoft's gaming division. There is nothing else other than Xbox Game Studios since it got rebranded as such in 2019. Age of Empires 4 is a first party Xbox IP even if it's not on an Xbox console.
Yeah, that was partly the reason why the rebranding so as to avoid confusion. Everything gaming related under the Microsoft umbrella is now unified under the Xbox Game Studios division. But Xbox Game Studios does have a corporate hierarchy still, which is Microsoft Gaming, which oversees all of Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, and soon Activision Blizzard. Which Phil Spencer is CEO of, and they then answer to Microsoft directly.
Think of it as how PlayStation Studios answers to Sony Interactive Entertainment who then answers directly to Sony.
