One of the industries biggest, if not most infamous, publishers falls in Metacritic’s eighth annual Game Publisher Rankings. EA, Electronic Arts, has lost it number one spot in the 2017 standings.
EA Loses Number One Publisher Ranking
While taking some hit to its ranking isn’t surprising, failing to even make the list is. EA is responsible for some of the most popular franchises including SGO community cornerstones like Madden, FIFA and recently UFC. EA also features a huge library of non sports titles. This includes games like Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront, and Mass Effect. While its sports library is strong, it may be some of those very non sports titles that knocked EA off its standing.
Despite jumping back into the basketball genre with the release of NBA Live 18, many of EA’s titles flopped aggressively hard. Mass Effect Andromeda, a story driven space RPG, had a lot of hope behind it. Despite the love for the original trilogy, the game was plagued with numerous narrative breaking flaws and awful face animations.
Racing genre hopeful, Need For Speed:Payback looked to gain some momentum for EA. Unfortunately, the title fell to poor reviews and has been described as more or less a Fast and Furious knock off. Metacritic has prerequisites for making the list, one of them being 12 unique releases in a year. EA released only 11, missing the criteria for major publisher rankings. However, they did rank for mid-sized publishers but placed fifth failing to seize the number one spot. EA’s overall score dropped from 79% to a floundering 48%. It’s highest ranked game of the year was FIFA 18.
Moving Forward?
With the heat surrounding EA and its use of microtransactions, it’s tough to see the company making a huge comeback in 2018. Also, EA has foregone a traditional E3 conference. Perhaps an attempt to rally their forces? You can get more on there fall here and details on how Metacritic rates publishers.
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