MetaCritic’s rankings have traditionally been used by consumers to help determine whether or not a retail release is worth purchasing. It’s an aggregate site of many of the major game outlets like IGN and Polygon, where you can see the average of everyone’s score. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. What’s interesting though is the year end reports MetaCritic does for each of the media categories it covers. Just yesterday the reviews aggregator published data on game rankings for 2014, showing the year as one of the worst for gaming in terms of quality releases.
Despite that terrible news, one interesting piece of information that came from the report is that Nintendo claimed the title of best publisher for the year, jumping from number four in 2013 all the way to number one in 2014. So what helped with that boost? Quality releases. Here’s a quick look at Nintendo’s best and worst for the year:
As you can see, Super Smash Bros. was the highest rated title produced by Nintendo last year, while Bravey Default took the best new original title. Out of 34 unique titles released in the year of 2014, Nintendo achieved an aggregate score of 76.5, which means it remained in the green according to MetaCritic’s rankings. Other titles instrumental to this were Mario Kart 8 and Bayonetta 2.
Further breaking down Nintendo’s score by console and handheld, the Wii U had 12 major releases this year and they all achieved an average score of 81.3. The Nintendo 3DS had 22 releases in the same period, with an average score of 73.9. It’s safe to say that a few of the releases on Nintendo 3DS brought the overall quality of Nintendo’s score down. No other publisher this year managed to achieve an average of 80 and many failed to land a single game that was ranked at 90 or above.
Sony achieved an average ranking of 72.5 and claimed fourth spot on the list, while Microsoft achieved a ranking of 68.9 and was only sixth on the list.
If you’re interested in reading the rest of the report to see how individual game publishers such as Ubisoft and Electronic Arts did this year, you can check it out here. It’s safe to say that 2014 was one of the worst years in gaming for the general audience, although Nintendo fans had a lot to look forward to were likely overall more satisfied with their purchases thanks to quality releases.
