Microsoft is keen to become the top company in the world for video gaming, and so far, its efforts are paying off. So much so that Metacritic, in its yearly ranking of publishers, awarded the Redmond giant with a gold medal for its track record as a publisher.

Microsoft's Number One Spot as a Video Game Publisher

Metacritic acts as an aggregate of critics' scores to give an overall average, called its "Metascore." This score gives gamers a one-glance summary of how well a game is doing in the eyes of reviewers and players. As such, the fact that it crowned Microsoft as the king of publishers in the 2022 Game Publisher Rankings is nothing to scoff at.

Metacritic worked this out by taking the Metascore of all the games Microsoft published in the past year and averaging them for a final score. Usually, a publisher doesn't get an average over 85 out of 100, but Microsoft smashed that with an impressive 87.4 average score.

Microsoft achieved this by setting another standard with its track record. While publishers may have a poorly-received game or two, all ten of the games Microsoft published in the past year were good ones. And three of them went on to score higher than a 90:

...the latest Forza Horizon racer, a sequel to Psychonauts, and the Xbox Series X version of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Microsoft's achievement puts it far ahead of its old rival, Sony, which clocked in at number two with an average Metascore of 81.3.

Microsoft Is Winning Gamers Over

Microsoft has made a huge effort to garner the respect of gamers. Its Xbox Game Pass plan is heralded as the "Netflix of video games," to the point where it's a minor miracle to find a PC gamer not subscribed to it.

Of course, a subscription service is only as good as the content on it, and Microsoft cannot afford to shovel in hundreds of subpar games to fill up its library. As such, it seems they're making strategic choices over which game they publish so that they can then add high-ranking gems into their Xbox Game Pass plan.

A Big Win for Microsoft

The Redmond giant had a good year for games, to the point where it took home the trophy for Metacritic's best publisher. But can it keep up the momentum? We'll just have to wait until next year to find out.