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Businesses Entertainment Games

Top 20 Game Publishers 38

Posted by Zonk from the you're-the-tops dept.
Patrick Caldwell writes "Game Developer magazine recently released a list of the top 20 video game publishers. EA, Activision, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are the first five, as could probably have been predicted." From the article: " For the third year in a row, Electronic Arts (EA) has grabbed the top slot on the "Top 20 Publishers" chart. EA reached an annual revenue of more than $3.1 billion, continued high output and received positive average reviews for its titles. However, the company faced some serious competition from fellow publishers like Activision, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, all of whom had very strong showings this year and rounded out the top 5 in that order."
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Top 20 Game Publishers More

Top 20 Game Publishers

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  • Human resources? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Monday October 24, 2005 @05:12PM (#13866752) Homepage Journal

    I wonder whether these companies' HR departments are going to be slashdotted with resumes from unemployed homebrew game developers now.

  • The Full List (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sugar Moose ( 686011 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @05:32PM (#13866865) Journal
    ...since the article doesn't give it to you, or link to it:

          1. Electronic Arts
          2. Activision
          3. Microsoft Game Studios
          4. Nintendo
          5. Sony Computer Entertainment
          6. Ubisoft
          7. Konami
          8. THQ
          9. Sega Sammy Holdings
        10. Take-Two Interactive
        11. Namco
        12. Vivendi Universal Games
        13. Atari
        14. SCi Games
        15. Capcom
        16. Square Enix
        17. Bandai Games
        18. Codemasters
        19. Midway
        20. LucasArts

  • News article (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24, 2005 @05:33PM (#13866873)
    Here's an actual news story about the list, at http://igo.ampednews.com/news/2798/ [ampednews.com] with a full list and more information from the article in the actual magazine:

    For the third-straight year, Electronic Arts has taken home the top slot in Game Developer magazine's yearly list of the top-20 video game publishers.

    The list, published in the magazine's October 2005 issue, reads like a veritable "who's who" of popular game companies. Activision, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony followed EA in finishing off the top 5 -- though a number of factors, including both revenue and game quality, determined where the publishers ranked.

    EA was a no-brainer. With an annual revenue of more than $3.1 billion, EA is the largest video game publisher in the world. The company released 126 games during the past year -- the most of any game publisher -- among them new titles in some of its flagship franchises, including The Sims, Madden NFL and Medal of Honor.

    A number of business moves in 2004 and early 2005 helped cement the company's position atop the publisher pack.

    The acquisition of Criterion Games landed one of 2004's most critically acclaimed titles, Burnout 3, in EA's hands. And the signing of exclusive contracts with the NFL and ESPN meant EA Sports' Madden NFL 06 was the only game in town with real-life NFL players, coaches and teams, as football aficionados responded by buying more copies of the football game than the year before.

    Other than Criterion, EA's business connections with two other major game companies increased its slice of the development pie. It purchased 19.9 percent of Ubisoft -- which the magazine ranked at No. 6 -- and took over publishing rights of Valve Software's Half-Life 2 from Vivendi Universal Games, which ranked at No. 12.

    But, the magazine said, EA faced strong competition from the other top 5, especially Activision and Microsoft.

    Activision, publisher of Doom 3 and the Tony Hawk series, saw one of the biggest increases, from No. 7 to No. 2, this year as it added three new development studios: Toys for Bob, Beenox and Vicarious Visions. "Activision's policy of leaving studios more autonomous after purchasing them works just as well as EA's consolidation method," Game Developer noted.

    Though it was Activision that bumped last year's No. 2., Microsoft Game Studios, down a spot, the magazine expects the company behind the Xbox and Halo to rebound. With a determined fall lineup that includes the release of the Xbox 360 and a bevy of "well-reviewed first-party games," Microsoft's switch from PC to Xbox game development has resulted in a swift ascension to the upper echelon of publishers. Expect a stronger commitment to the Japanese games market with the 360, as well, the magazine said.

    Nintendo's claim of the No. 4 spot can largely be credited to the strong performance of its Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance platforms, while Sony slipped to No. 5 this year despite the critical success of games like God of War and Ratchet and Clank 3.

    Take Two Interactive, which publishes Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series, saw a drop to No. 10, partly due to the controversy surrounding Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' "Hot Coffee" sexual conten mod and resulting political and economic fallout. And since Take Two also publishes value-brand games developed by Global Star, its ranking has suffered because the magazine's list takes into consideration average review scores of the publishers' games. But a strong showing from Take Two's new sports game line -- 2K Sports, formerly Sega's Visual Concepts -- means that "next year is anyone's game," the magazine said.

    In selecting its list, Game Developer used more than "raw revenue vales" to determine the rankings. Six criteria determined a company's placing: annual turnover, number of title releases, average review score, producer quality, reliability of milestone payments, and quality of staff pay and perks.

    "This year's research reflects the continuing

  • Wow... (Score:2)

    by Shads ( 4567 ) *
    ... there's some shocks. Not really. I'd just be happy if any of them could put out an inovative product instead of just copying what was done last year... again... and again.

    What ever happened to games like xcom, moo, spellcraft, privateer, etc? I'd kill for a game that had a fraction of that inovation today... instead of just another year of madden or yet another need for speed.

    • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Darune ( 716587 )
      I'm trying not to be a fanboy, but try the DS for some innovation. True the franchises are the same, but some of the games are quite different. I suggest:

      Feel the Magic XX/YY
      Kirby's Canvas Course
      Trace Memory

      Castlevania is great, but is basically Symphony of the night in your pocket.
      Games that follow the same franchise can be innovative, unfortunately most aren't. Also don't pass over a game just because the graphics look childish, sometimes those are the best ones.

      Of course, these games may not be
      • Ill second that. I bought my DS for portable multiplayer mario kart (cant wait till next month) but in the mean time, Im having a TON of fun with some of the more interesting titles (and no, nintendogs isnt interesting)
  • I do not see any BSDs on that list ... as far as I am concerned, if I cannot find hunt, cribbage, rogue, and wump in /usr/games as soon as I set up a system, it is not worth bothering with.

    (I kid)
  • I disagree with this list on many fronts. EA is not the best publisher, just the largest/most profitable/most prolific or some combination thereof. The overall quality of EA games is going down the toilet and by the news I've read the treatment of their employees ranges somewhere between 3rd world sweat shop workers and Russian soldiers during WWI. EA is probably the biggest offender on those fronts but similar things could be said about many of those 'top publishers'. A qualitative perspective would probab
    • Before anything else, I would hardly call Game Developers a "gaming magazine". The magazine is very clearly not for gamers, so what gamers care about is not important here.

      Now, with that said...

      EA is a horrible company to deal with, but you can't say the quality of EA's games are heading down the crapper. EA's games averaged 81% in a Rotten Tomatoes-esque review of all the games they had released in the last year. The only companies in the top twenty that beat EA here were LucasArts with 81.6% and Microsoft
    • The "sweatshop" news is bullshit. Their new Los Angeles studio was a disaster, with bad management and worse practices, but they've cleaned it up now. I'd wager that people at EA are treated /better/ than at many other game companies.
      • I'd wager that people at EA are treated /better/ than at many other game companies.

        Why? True, one data point cannot be trusted as represetative of an entire system. If LA was an aberration from the norm, that in no way implies the EA norm is that much better than there rest of the world. Just because they cleaned it up does not imply this, either. It was a PR mess. What led you to that conclusion?
  • I'm surprised there still are that many - I'd assume the top three would buy up all the others, thereby being able to dictate the direction the market goes - not to mention being able to dictate programmer/artist salaries; such a level of control will allow them to fire anyone not willing to work for free...
  • though a number of factors, including both revenue and game quality, determined where the publishers ranked.

    EA takes number one when you consider game quality? Given the sheer number of crap they put out every year, their ranking should've gone way down simply due to poor reviews. The rest of the top 5 I can understand (Doom 3 boosted Activision's sales and the rest are first-party publishers.)

    • EA takes number one when you consider game quality? Given the sheer number of crap they put out every year, their ranking should've gone way down simply due to poor reviews. The rest of the top 5 I can understand (Doom 3 boosted Activision's sales and the rest are first-party publishers.)

      I call bullshit.

      Maybe Activision has the odd quality title like "Doom 3", but also release total crap like "Fantastic Four", "Madagascar", and "Monster Garage". Each one of those titles is worse than anything EA put out la

      • No one wants to play a 75% title for more than a few hours. There are so many games that make it 3/4s the way there then run out of gas and I don't want to spend the time or money playing them. I want games that I can really sink my teeth into. I'll forgive any number of crappy licensed games for a Dawn of War or a Doom 3. Consistency is great if you're talking about your grades in high school or your job performance but there are some things I'd prefer to be better than 'solid'. EA and the rest of them ar
        • EA has just as many "Doom 3"'s as any other company:

          Battlefield 2 (PC)
          Burnout Revenge
          Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath

          All released this year. And for that matter, take another look at the sports games -- Madden is going stale, but "NBA Street v3" and "Fight Night: Round 2" are chart-toppers on Metacritic, with plenty of 100% reviews.

          The myth is that EA gets away with crap because they are #1. The fact is that they are #1 because they are better than any other publisher in the industry. Period.
          • Battlefield 2 was arguably the buggiest PC game at launch third only to Half-Life 2's Steam problems (admittedly, that was due to sheer demand) and World of Warcraft's lack of servers (again admittedly, they admitted the fact that they underestimated demand). Battlefield 2 on the other hand still suffers from balance issues (aircraft are overpowered), AI issues (the AI is stupider than BF1942 or BF:Vietnam AI), and bug issues (which have an even worse tendancy to occur randomly making it impossible to avoid
      • If THQ hadn't created Valusoft to save at least some face they'd have the lowest average rating of the entire industry.
      • If you want companies that consistently make good games you may be interested in Valve, Blizzard, Nintendo, Raven, and id, at least in my opinion.
        • Valve is currently published by EA. Blizzard is published by Vivendi Universal. Raven and id are published by Activision (I think).

          If you want to switch the topic to developers, then I agree, those guys are the best of the bunch. Then again, EA has some solid internal teams too -- Criterion (Burnout games), Maxis (SimCity, Sims, Spore), and Bond Team (Everything or Nothing, From Russia With Love).
  • Shoveling shit out the door doesn't make you a top publisher.

    I haven't purchased an EA game in years.
  • "The study rates the world's leading game publishers' performance in several areas. Six different measures are taken into consideration on top of revenue -- annual turnover, number of title releases, average review score, producer quality, reliability of milestone payments, and the quality of staff pay and perks."

    If EA is number one, I sure feel sorry for the guys working at the other 19 companies!
    Are capcom_spouse and activision_spouse far behind?

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