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Game Developer's Top 20 Publishers, 2006
Year formed: 1993 Sony gains the number four spot on the Top 20 Publishers list, as Microsoft drops from the top five. Despite strong continued sales of God of War and a respectable showing by MLB 2006 The Show for PlayStation 2, first-party software sales for the platform fell off during the period considered in our methodology. First-party PSP software sales buoyed Sony though, and allowed the Tokyo-based company to hold steady in terms of revenue. A slightly higher average review score — to which Shadow of the Colossus’s shining critical reception contributed — doubtless helped the company’s standing in our ranking. Guerrilla Games has proved to be a valuable asset to Sony’s first-party portfolio, with Killzone games on the way for PSP and PlayStation 3, and Sony acknowledging the fact more concretely by acquiring the Dutch developer this year.
Year formed: 1993 Take-Two Interactive, the owner of the powerhouse Rockstar Games publishing label and the lucrative Grand Theft Auto franchise, has proven successful at maintaining a plateful of successful releases, even in a year without a new mainline GTA release. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, co-published with Bethesda, broke sales records for Xbox 360 games and was no slouch in the PC format either. Civilization IV also performed well, and the PSP release of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories proved to be one of the top-selling titles on the platform during the period considered. Unsurprisingly, the now $20 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas continued to contribute to the company’s revenues. Take-Two acquired sterling independent developer Irrational Games in January as a result of a relationship the two companies formed around Irrational’s upcoming release Bioshock. Nabbing this team will likely result in even more high quality, original IPs for the publisher and create an opportunity for Irrational’s often-niche projects to receive more marketing attention than they have in the past. The scandal over Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ “hot coffee” was still threatening Take-Two as this ranking’s period of consideration began. While the company in June received a subpoena from the District Attorney of New York County’s office for documents related to “hot coffee” and regarding financial issues, in July the FTC let Take-Two off the hook by announcing that no penalties or fines would be imposed as a result of its investigation. Of course, the FTC did gently remind Take-Two to properly represent games’ ratings and content descriptors in the future. |
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