Earlier in the month, we found out who the most consistent publisher in the world is. As in, whose games consistently receive good review scores. Now let's find out who the best developer is.
And surprise, according to the people putting this list together, it's not Rockstar. Why? Because while Rockstar is a single entity in terms of publishing, there are, at last count, eight Rockstar development studios. And they had to be counted individually, meaning only one Rockstar team - Rockstar North (ie the main GTA team) - made the cut.
Its 11th-placed finish, only one spot behind Valve, is because the survey (by researchers GameQuarry) counted both quality and quantity. So while teams like Rockstar, Valve and Infinity Ward (at #19) do great games when they do them, they don't do them as often as the list's top four do.
Atop the list are Visual Concepts. Never heard of them? They're a former Sega team, and are the studio behind 2K's consistently-excellent sports games. Following Visual are another sports studio, EA Tiburon (the Madden guys), followed by Nintendo, followed by another sports team, EA Sports (FIFA).
You can see the full list below:
* 1. Visual Concepts
* 2. EA Tiburon
* 3. Nintendo
* 4. EA Sports
* 5. Neversoft Entertainment
* 6. Konami Tokyo
* 7. Harmonix
* 8. Sports Interactive
* 9. Intelligent Systems
* 10. Valve
* 11. Rockstar North
* 12. BioWare
* 13. EA Canada
* 14. Criterion
* 15. Bethesda Softworks
* 16. Raven Software
* 17. Firaxis
* 18. Insomniac Games
* 19. Infinity Ward
* 20. Epic Games