Square Enix Was Metacritic's Highest Rated Publisher in 2025 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 April 2026 / 4,534 Views
Metacritic has released its 16th Annual Game Publisher Rankings and Square Enix was the number one ranked publisher of 2025.
"Ranking #1 for the very first time in our 16 years of compiling these rankings, Japanese publisher 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," said Metacritic.
"A variety of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles scored highly for the publisher last year (and also in early 2026), while even its 'worst' 2025 release, SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered, earned approval from critics."
Publisher scores are calculated by four factors
- Average Metascore for all games released in 2025
- Percent of scored products with good reviews (Metascore of at least 75)
- Percent of scored products with bad reviews (49 or lower)
- Number of "great" titles (Metascore of 90 or higher with seven or more reviews)
Here are Metacritic's top 10 publishers of 2025 along with the number of points and average metascore:
- Square Enix (330.5 points) – 84
- Gamirror Games (322.4 points) – 82
- Capcom (322.2 points) – 83
- Thunderful (306.8 points) – 78
- Microsoft (305.7 points) – 80
- Take-Two (304.0 points) – 79
- Sega (303.9 points) – 80
- Electronic Arts (302.9 points) – 79
- Dotemu (302.2 points) – 81
- Raw Fury (301.0 points) – 79
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 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
More Articles
Nintendo and Sony didn't even make the Top 10.
They don't often make the top ten. Microsoft and Sega tend to dominate these things. I'm not sure the specifics as to why, but I know as far as Nintendo is concerned, it has a lot to do with they release a lot of games, being platform owners. A 95MC can only do so much for your score when you have Everybody 1-2 Switch or the tag team trio of DragXDrive, Welcome Tour, and Fire Emblem iOS.
This proves that MS threw in the towel at the worst possible moment. Sony has been really lacking this gen.
Microsoft didn't have a chance in hell of turning that mess around.
Square Enix will still say they under perform.
wheres sony and nintendo?
So sand fall one game doesn't count?
What happened to Sony and Nintendo?
You can see it on the site, but I suspect these numbers have a lot to do with this:
Nintendo: "Average Metascore: 77, 68% good, 0% bad"
Sony: "Average Metascore: 74, 53% good, 0% bad"
For comparison, Raw Fury, which sits at #10, has the following numbers: "Average Metascore: 79, 77% good, 0% bad".
