With all the hype and subsequent disappointment surrounding the launches of Redfall and Starfield, it may come as a surprise that Bethesda has wound up in Metacritic’s top ten publishers of 2023. Even after some big disappointments, the company published some genuine bangers last year – enough to offset the poor reception of two of its banner titles.
Metacritic’s rankings are based the average Metascore for all the games a publisher released in a given year, the percentage of those games that had “good” Metascores of 75 or higher, the percentage that earned “bad” scores of 49 or lower, and the number of “great” titles that had combined scores of 90 or higher.
Despite the relatively low scores of vampire game Redfall, Bethesda rounded out the year with 308.3 points, with six new titles (and twelve total products) launched in 2023 that earned a combined Metascore of 80, with 83% marked as “good” and one “great” game in the bunch. That was Hi-Fi Rush, the action rhythm game that scored an even 90 on Metacritic. Just behind that was Quake II – Enhanced Edition, which earned a total Metascore of 89.
Even the big disappointments of 2023, Starfield and Redfall, managed to avoid the dreaded “bad” status. Redfall is sitting at a Metascore of 56 (you can read our Redfall review to see what we gave it), while Starfield has a “generally favorable” aggregate score of 86 (although user scores are decidedly more mixed).
Sitting in the top spot for 2023 is Capcom, which published several “great” games by Metacritic’s metrics. The Resident Evil 4 Remake, Street Fighter 6, and Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective all wound up with Metascores of 90 or higher.
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