Sony had a rough 2025 by most measures, but seeing it ranked 21st out of 28 publishers on Metacritic's annual publisher rankings still stings. The platform just dropped its full 2025 publisher rankings, and the results are a genuine gut-punch for PlayStation fans.
How Metacritic builds this list
Every year, Metacritic runs the numbers on every non-mobile game publisher's output and sorts them by the percentage of releases that landed as "good" or "great" according to critic aggregations. Volume matters too, which is why a publisher can't just release one well-reviewed indie title and claim the crown. This year's list covered 28 publishers total.
The top 12, ranked
Here's how the top of the list shook out:
PlayStation sits at 21st. Not pictured, but very much felt.
Square Enix at the top, somehow
Square Enix topping the list is the kind of result that sounds obvious in hindsight but genuinely caught most people off guard. In 16 years of Metacritic running these rankings, this is the first time Square Enix has ever claimed the number one spot. The publisher put out 9 releases in 2025 and every single one landed as good or great according to critics. That's a perfect score across a full slate of games, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.
Here's the thing: a lot of people weren't paying close attention to just how consistently Square Enix was shipping quality in 2025. It wasn't one massive release carrying the weight. It was a quiet, sustained run of titles and ports that critics kept responding to.
Capcom keeps its streak alive
Capcom at third place is far less surprising. The publisher has been on a sustained run of quality releases for several years now, and Resident Evil Requiem dropping in 2025 only added to that momentum. Seven releases, 93% good or great. That's not a fluke, that's a system.
Xbox landing fifth is also worth unpacking. Metacritic folds Activision, Blizzard, and Bethesda titles into Xbox's numbers, which inflates the count to 21 releases. Forza Horizon 5 launching on PS5 contributed to that tally too. So the number reflects the full Microsoft publishing umbrella, not just first-party Xbox Studios output.
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Ubisoft at 11th and EA at 8th both outranked Nintendo, which finished 12th despite 18 releases and a Switch 2 launch year.
Nintendo's surprisingly quiet year
Nintendo missing the top 10 is almost as surprising as Sony's placement. The company launched the Switch 2 in 2025 and still pushed out 18 releases, yet only 68% of them landed as good or great. That's enough volume to keep them on the board, but not enough quality consistency to crack the top tier.
Ubisoft and Xbox both finished ahead of Nintendo. That sentence would have read as absurd a few years ago.
Sony's 2025 in one brutal stat
PlayStation at 21st out of 28 is the headline, but the detail that really twists the knife is this: Sony's highest-ranked game of 2025 on Metacritic was The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered. On PC. A remaster of a PS4 game, ported to a platform Sony doesn't even make hardware for, was the best thing the publisher put out by critics' measure.
Death Stranding 2 and Yotei performed well individually, but releases like Lost Soul Aside dragged the overall picture down. The lack of big, new, highly-rated first-party games left Sony with too little to work with. The live-service pivot that defined much of Sony's PS5-era strategy didn't generate the critical wins needed to offset the gaps.
For context, Sony actually won this exact ranking back in 2023. The fall from first to 21st in two years is steep. The full breakdown and past winners going back to 2011 are worth a look if you want the complete publisher ranking data. Whether Sony's 2026 output changes this picture depends heavily on what first-party titles actually ship and land well with critics this year. Make sure to check out more:
