SupahSaiyangirl
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This is my way to make up to the people out there that i have inadvertantly pissed of with my somewhat weird brand of humor 
just the best game developers of year list and no poll..... no flaming, not bashing, and no insults just news!!!! yay news!!!
t: and to those who are going to jump to conclusions about im just putting this up here because nintendo is number one.......no it just so happens i like nintendo and their number one and it was some of the only news i could post without you guys bitting my head off
This year, Mario trumps Madden.
Maybe not in overall revenues, but according to the top 20 publishers list, put out annually by Game Developer Magazine, Nintendo leveled up on Electronic Arts this year.
How? It wasnt pure financials, although Nintendo was competitive in that respect. And it wasnt due to number of releases: Nintendo shipped just 32 games last year. EA shipped 116.
But this year, for the first time, the list-compiling people at Game Developer decided to add in another factor reputation. They asked game industry professionals to rate publishers and leave comments about them. Based on those results, Nintendo got the brass ring.
Nintendo is a really well-regarded company in the industry right now, says the magazines publisher, Simon Carless. Electronic Arts has some reputation problems.
Nintendos George Harrison says the company is pleased to be recognized but in the same breath said consumer recognition is the thing thats most important to us, and drives our business strategies.
And EA? Theyre not buying it. They point out that the difference between the rankings of the two top companies is less than 3 percent hardly an upset. And they say that adding a squishy thing like reputation into the methodology undermines the validity of the survey.
Our claim as being the number one publisher in the world remains undisputed, says EA spokesperson Holly Rockwood. This claim is based on revenue and purely from a business perspective it is what we are measured by on the street.
But Carless says theres more than one way to go about ranking top publishers. Revenues are important, sure. But companies that ship games on multiple platforms Madden 08, for instance have a built in advantage. He says adding reputation to the mix evened things out a bit and made things more interesting.
The list is based on opinion, which is one of the things that makes it entertaining, he says. Any top list is necessarily subjective. But alongside the subjectiveness, there is lots of salient data.
The magazine used five different criteria to compile its rankings: Reputation, revenues, number of releases, average review score ratings and detailed responses from developers whod worked directly with the companies. The magazine tracked data from September 2006 to August of this year, and put out the call for anonymous comments on their Web portal, gamasutra.com at the end of this summer.
list Top 20 game publishers
Rank/Publisher
1Nintendo
2 Electronic Arts
3 ACtivision
4 Ubisoft
5 THQ
6 Take Two
7 Sega of America
8 Sony
9 Microsoft
10 SCi/Eidos
11 Square Enix
12 Namco Bandai Games
13 Vivendi Games
14 Capcom
15 Konami
16 NCSoft
17 Disney Interactive Studios
18 Atlus USA
19 LucasArts
20 Midway
Source: Game Developer magazine
Because the comments are anonymous, theres no way to know for sure that a grouse about
Konamis salary package, for example, actually came from someone who works at Konami. Or that EAs negative reputation responses werent just from someone with an axe to grind. But Carless says that hes confident that they received honest responses.
We tracked IP addresses to make sure that all the responses werent from the same person, he says.
That did happen in one case: NCSoft. The staff at the magazine noticed that a lot of the positive responses about the PC publisher were coming from the companys Korean headquarters. So, they docked the company down to an average reputation rating.
For the record, NCSoft denies that the voting was an organized effort.
"If people want to participate individually, they're welcome to do so," said company spokesperson Mike Crouch.
Here are some other interesting developments in this years top publishers list:
Sony dropped four slots this year, from No. 4 in 2006 to No. 8 in the most recent ranking. This is mostly due to fewer releases, but Carless says reputation hurt them too. Although developers were asked to comment specifically on the software side of the business, the company carries around reputational baggage from the beleaguered PlayStation 3.
Microsoft saw its ranking slip three slots, to No. 9, due to a limited number of releases that garnered mixed reviews from critics. Gears of War was the first big hit for the Xbox 360, which helped keep them in the top 10. Developers gave the company high marks on the reputation part of the survey, but detailed feedback saw criticism of the companys organizational structure. (And as always, I must point out that MSNBC is a joint Microsoft NBC Universal venture.)
French publisher Ubisoft shimmied up the rankings this year, from No. 8 to No. 4. Carless says the company was smart to see the potential in casual games, and has enjoyed strong sales from Dog/Catz relaunch and Rayman Raving Rabbids. The company was second only to Nintendo on the reputation survey, but took some hits from external partners on the detailed feedback. The magazine has offered up the Ubisoft profile as a freebie on its gamedevresearch.com Web site, as an incentive to sell the rest of the report.
And finally, a moment of silence: Atari, so dominant in the 70s and 80s, has dropped off the list. Declining revenues and a poor showing on the survey contributed to its exit.
So, does this annual ranking impact what you, the consumer, see on the retail shelves? Not directly. But companies with good reputations attract smart people. Ideally, that leads to better games.
What do you think of the top 20 list? How does it match up with the publishers that you like the best? Weigh in on our discussion board.
just the best game developers of year list and no poll.....
no flaming, not bashing, and no insults just news!!!! yay news!!!t: and to those who are going to jump to conclusions about im just putting this up here because nintendo is number one.......no it just so happens i like nintendo and their number one and it was some of the only news i could post without you guys bitting my head off This year, Mario trumps Madden.
Maybe not in overall revenues, but according to the top 20 publishers list, put out annually by Game Developer Magazine, Nintendo leveled up on Electronic Arts this year.
How? It wasnt pure financials, although Nintendo was competitive in that respect. And it wasnt due to number of releases: Nintendo shipped just 32 games last year. EA shipped 116.
But this year, for the first time, the list-compiling people at Game Developer decided to add in another factor reputation. They asked game industry professionals to rate publishers and leave comments about them. Based on those results, Nintendo got the brass ring.
Nintendo is a really well-regarded company in the industry right now, says the magazines publisher, Simon Carless. Electronic Arts has some reputation problems.
Nintendos George Harrison says the company is pleased to be recognized but in the same breath said consumer recognition is the thing thats most important to us, and drives our business strategies.
And EA? Theyre not buying it. They point out that the difference between the rankings of the two top companies is less than 3 percent hardly an upset. And they say that adding a squishy thing like reputation into the methodology undermines the validity of the survey.
Our claim as being the number one publisher in the world remains undisputed, says EA spokesperson Holly Rockwood. This claim is based on revenue and purely from a business perspective it is what we are measured by on the street.
But Carless says theres more than one way to go about ranking top publishers. Revenues are important, sure. But companies that ship games on multiple platforms Madden 08, for instance have a built in advantage. He says adding reputation to the mix evened things out a bit and made things more interesting.
The list is based on opinion, which is one of the things that makes it entertaining, he says. Any top list is necessarily subjective. But alongside the subjectiveness, there is lots of salient data.
The magazine used five different criteria to compile its rankings: Reputation, revenues, number of releases, average review score ratings and detailed responses from developers whod worked directly with the companies. The magazine tracked data from September 2006 to August of this year, and put out the call for anonymous comments on their Web portal, gamasutra.com at the end of this summer.
list Top 20 game publishers
Rank/Publisher
1Nintendo
2 Electronic Arts
3 ACtivision
4 Ubisoft
5 THQ
6 Take Two
7 Sega of America
8 Sony
9 Microsoft
10 SCi/Eidos
11 Square Enix
12 Namco Bandai Games
13 Vivendi Games
14 Capcom
15 Konami
16 NCSoft
17 Disney Interactive Studios
18 Atlus USA
19 LucasArts
20 Midway
Source: Game Developer magazine
Because the comments are anonymous, theres no way to know for sure that a grouse about
Konamis salary package, for example, actually came from someone who works at Konami. Or that EAs negative reputation responses werent just from someone with an axe to grind. But Carless says that hes confident that they received honest responses.
We tracked IP addresses to make sure that all the responses werent from the same person, he says.
That did happen in one case: NCSoft. The staff at the magazine noticed that a lot of the positive responses about the PC publisher were coming from the companys Korean headquarters. So, they docked the company down to an average reputation rating.
For the record, NCSoft denies that the voting was an organized effort.
"If people want to participate individually, they're welcome to do so," said company spokesperson Mike Crouch.
Here are some other interesting developments in this years top publishers list:
Sony dropped four slots this year, from No. 4 in 2006 to No. 8 in the most recent ranking. This is mostly due to fewer releases, but Carless says reputation hurt them too. Although developers were asked to comment specifically on the software side of the business, the company carries around reputational baggage from the beleaguered PlayStation 3.
Microsoft saw its ranking slip three slots, to No. 9, due to a limited number of releases that garnered mixed reviews from critics. Gears of War was the first big hit for the Xbox 360, which helped keep them in the top 10. Developers gave the company high marks on the reputation part of the survey, but detailed feedback saw criticism of the companys organizational structure. (And as always, I must point out that MSNBC is a joint Microsoft NBC Universal venture.)
French publisher Ubisoft shimmied up the rankings this year, from No. 8 to No. 4. Carless says the company was smart to see the potential in casual games, and has enjoyed strong sales from Dog/Catz relaunch and Rayman Raving Rabbids. The company was second only to Nintendo on the reputation survey, but took some hits from external partners on the detailed feedback. The magazine has offered up the Ubisoft profile as a freebie on its gamedevresearch.com Web site, as an incentive to sell the rest of the report.
And finally, a moment of silence: Atari, so dominant in the 70s and 80s, has dropped off the list. Declining revenues and a poor showing on the survey contributed to its exit.
So, does this annual ranking impact what you, the consumer, see on the retail shelves? Not directly. But companies with good reputations attract smart people. Ideally, that leads to better games.
What do you think of the top 20 list? How does it match up with the publishers that you like the best? Weigh in on our discussion board.
