Video game publisher - wikipedia Video game publisher This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( August 2009 ) Part of a series on the : Video game industry Activities / jobs Video game design Game design Game art design Game development / Game developer Game modification Game producer Game programming / Game programmer Game publisher Game studies Game testing Game journalism Level design Development Game AI Game design Interaction design Game programming Level design Video game art Video game design Video game graphics Video game music Types Adult game Casual game Indie game Non-game Interactive art Interactive movie Nonviolent video game Serious game Advergame Art game Edugame Exergame Topics Digital rights management ( DRM ) Outsourcing Software license End - user license agreement ( EULA ) Related Video game History of video games Lists List of indie game developers List of video game developers List of video game industry people List of video game publishers List of video game websites A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer. As with book publishers or publishers of DVD movies, video game publishers are responsible for their product 's manufacturing and marketing, including market research and all aspects of advertising. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ( the publisher calls this external development ) and sometimes by paying an internal staff of developers called a studio. The large video game publishers also distribute the games they publish, while some smaller publishers instead hire distribution companies ( or larger video game publishers ) to distribute the games they publish. Other functions usually performed by the publisher include deciding on and paying for any licenses used by the game ; paying for localization ; layout, printing, and possibly the writing of the user manual ; and the creation of graphic design elements such as the box design. Some large publishers with vertical structure also own publishing subsidiaries ( labels ). Large publishers may also attempt to boost efficiency across all internal and external development teams by providing services such as sound design and code packages for commonly needed functionality. Because the publisher often finances development, it usually tries to manage development risk with a staff of producers or project managers to monitor the progress of the developer, critique ongoing development, and assist as necessary. Most video games created by an external video game developer are paid for with periodic advances on royalties. These advances are paid when the developer reaches certain stages of development, called milestones. Contents 1 Business risks 2 Investor interest 3 Rankings 3.1 Major publishers 3.2 Mid-size publishers 4 See also 5 References Business risks Video game publishing is associated with high risk : The Christmas selling season accounts for a highly significant portion of industry sales, leading to a concentrated influx of high - quality competition every year in every game category, all in the fourth quarter of the year. Product slippage is common due to the uncertain schedules of software development. Most publishers have suffered a `` false launch '', in which the development staff assures the company that game development will be completed by a certain date, and a marketing launch is planned around that date, including advertising commitments, and then after all the advertising is paid for, the development staff announces that the game will `` slip '', and will actually be ready several months later than originally intended. When the game finally appears, the effects among consumers of the marketing launch -- excitement and `` buzz '' over the release of the game and an intent to purchase have dissipated, and lackluster interest leads to weak sales. An example of this is the PSP version of Spider - Man 3. These problems are compounded if the game is supposed to ship for the Christmas selling season, but actually slips into the subsequent year. Some developers ( notably id and Epic ) have alleviated this problem by simply saying that a given game will be released `` when it 's done '', only announcing a definite date once the game is released to manufacturing. However, this sometimes can be problematic as well, as seen with Duke Nukem Forever. The industry has become more `` hit driven '' over the past decade. Consumers buy the game that 's best - marketed but not necessarily of the highest quality, therefore buying fewer other games in that genre. This has led to much larger game development budgets, as every game publisher tries to ensure that its game is # 1 in its category. It also caused publishers to on occasion force developers to focus on sequels of successful franchises instead of exploring original IP ; some publishers such as Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts have both attracted criticism for acquiring studios with original games, and assigning them to support roles in more mainstream franchises. Games are becoming more expensive to produce. Current generation consoles have more advanced graphic capabilities than previous consoles. Taking advantage of those capabilities requires a larger team - size than games on earlier, simpler consoles. In order to compete with the best games on these consoles, there are more characters to animate ; all characters must be modeled with a higher level of detail ; more textures must be created ; the entire art pipeline must be made more complex to allow the creation of normal maps and more complex programming code is required to simulate physics in the game world, and to render everything as precisely and quickly as possible. On this generation of consoles, games commonly require budgets of US $15 million to $20 million. Activision 's Spider - Man 3, for example, cost US $35 million to develop, not counting the cost of marketing and sales. Every game financed is, then, a large gamble, and pressure to succeed is high. Contrasting with the big budget titles increased expense of `` front - line '' console games is the casual game market, in which smaller, simpler games are published for PCs and as downloadable console games. Also, Nintendo 's Wii console, though debuting in the same generation as the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, requires a smaller development budget, as innovation on the Wii is centered around the use of the Wii Remote and not around the graphics pipeline. When publishing for game consoles, game publishers take on the burden of a great deal of inventory risk. All significant console manufacturers since Nintendo with its NES ( 1985 ) have monopolized the manufacture of every game made for their console, and have required all publishers to pay a royalty for every game so manufactured. This royalty must be paid at the time of manufacturing, as opposed to royalty payments in almost all other industries, where royalties are paid upon actual sales of the product -- and, importantly, are payable for games that did not sell to a consumer. So, if a game publisher orders one million copies of its game, but half of them do not sell, the publisher has already paid the full console manufacturer royalty on one million copies of the game, and has to absorb that cost. Investor interest Numerous video game publishers are traded publicly on stock markets. As a group, they have had mixed performance. At present, Electronic Arts is the only third - party publisher present in the S&P 500 diversified list of large U.S. corporations ; in April 2010, it entered the Fortune 500 for the first time. Hype over video game publisher stocks has been breathless at two points : In the early 1990s, the introduction of CD - ROM computer drives caused hype about a multimedia revolution that would bring interactive entertainment to the masses. Several Hollywood movie studios formed `` interactive '' divisions to profit in this allegedly booming new media. Most of these divisions later folded after expensively producing several games that were heavy in `` full - motion video '' content, but light in the quality of gameplay. In the United States, revenue from the sales of video and computer games exceeded revenue from film box - office receipts for the first time in the dot - com days of the late 1990s, when technology companies in general were surrounded by hype. The video game publishers did not, however, experience the same level of rise in stock prices that many dot - com companies saw. This was probably because video game publishing was seen as a more mature industry whose prospects were fairly well understood, as opposed to the typical exciting dot - com business model with unknown but possibly sky - high prospects. While many technology stocks were eventually destroyed in the dot - com crash in the early 2000s, the stock prices of the video game publishers recovered as a group ; several of the larger publishers such as EA and Take - Two Interactive achieved historical highs in the mid-2000s. Rankings Major publishers Below are the largest publishers in general according to their revenue in billions of euros as of 2015. 2015 Name of Publisher Revenue in € bn Sony Interactive Entertainment 9.89 Tencent 7.73 Microsoft Studios 7.25 Nintendo 3.92 5 Activision Blizzard 3.32 6 Electronic Arts 3.25 7 Bandai Namco Entertainment 2.05 8 King Digital Entertainment 1.7 9 Nexon 1.55 10 Ubisoft 1.46 In 2016, the largest public companies by game revenue were Tencent, with US $10.2 billion, followed by Sony, with US $7.8 billion, and Activision Blizzard, with US $6.6 billion, according to Newzoo. Mid-size publishers Below are the top AA ( midsize ) video game publishers, ranked by Metacritic in January 2014 based on game quality according to reviews. These lists are based on the ranking by best to worst publishers according to metacritic 's website. Note that two major publishers, Take - Two Interactive and Sega fell to mid-size and one, Square Enix, jumped from mid-size to major. Three mid-size publishers ranked in 2013 were dropped from 2014 chart, namely Xseed Games and Kalypso Media. Note also that iOS games were not included in the figures. 2014 Position Name of Publisher 2013 Position Telltale Games N / A Paradox Interactive Capcom Take - Two Interactive N / A 5 Sega N / A 6 Zen Studios N / A 7 Devolver Digital N / A 8 Konami 9 Slitherine Strategies N / A 10 NIS America 8 11 Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment 12 Koei Tecmo 7 13 Atlus 6 14 505 Games 5 15 Aksys Games N / A 16 Deep Silver 9 17 Focus Home Interactive 10 Jump up ^ Was # 1 as a major publisher Jump up ^ Was # 7 as a major publisher See also Game development portal Console manufacturer Independent video game development List of video game publishers References Jump up ^ `` Months late, Spider - Man 3 goes to PSP with new content ''. Joystiq.com. Retrieved 17 September 2017. Jump up ^ Matthews, Matt ( 19 April 2012 ). `` Has video game retail become an entirely ' hits driven ' industry ? ''. Retrieved 12 August 2013. Jump up ^ `` ' White space ' helps us understand the strategic direction of gaming mergers and acquisitions ''. Retrieved 12 August 2013. Jump up ^ Messina, Judith ( 31 July 2013 ). `` Color Zen throws spotlight on city 's games scene ''. Retrieved 12 August 2013. Jump up ^ `` Activision Reduces Prototype Devs To `` Support '' Role, Significantly Reduces Staff Levels ``. TheSixthAxis. 2012 - 06 - 28. Retrieved 2012 - 08 - 17. Jump up ^ `` Activision cuts staff at ' Prototype ' video game studio ''. Content.usatoday.com. 2012 - 06 - 28. Retrieved 2012 - 08 - 17. Jump up ^ Zee, Mike ( 25 July 2013 ). `` Are Video Games Getting More Expensive Than They 're Worth ? ''. Yahoo Voices. Retrieved 12 August 2013. Jump up ^ `` Activision exec prices PS3 games '' from GameSpot Jump up ^ `` PlayStation ® Official Site -- PlayStation Console, Games, Accessories ''. Playstation. Retrieved 17 September 2017. Jump up ^ `` Archived copy ''. Archived from the original on 2013 - 12 - 21. Retrieved 2013 - 12 - 20. Jump up ^ `` Electronic Arts Breaks Into Fortune 500 '', Leigh Alexander, April 26, 2010, gamasutra.com. Fetched from Web on April 26, 2010. Jump up ^ `` Revenue of the largest video game publishers worldwide 2015 - Statistic ''. Statista.com. Retrieved 17 September 2017. Jump up ^ Rita Liao ( 2017 - 07 - 03 ). `` World 's top grossing mobile game debunks gender stereotype ''. technode. Retrieved 2017 - 07 - 07. Jump up ^ `` Metacritic 's 5th Annual Game Publisher Rankings '', metacritic.com, CBS Interactive Inc., January 30, 2014 Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Video_game_publisher&oldid=854698584 '' Categories : Video game development Video game publishers Hidden categories : All articles with dead external links Articles with dead external links from August 2018 Articles with permanently dead external links Articles needing additional references from August 2009 All articles needing additional references Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2015 All articles containing potentially dated statements Talk Contents About Wikipedia Català Dansk Deutsch Español فارسی Français 한국어 Bahasa Indonesia Italiano ქართული Latviešu Македонски Bahasa Melayu Nederlands Norsk Norsk nynorsk Polski Português Română Русский Scots Simple English Српски / srpski Svenska Tagalog ไทย Türkçe Tiếng Việt 中文 21 more Edit links This page was last edited on 13 August 2018, at 05 : 04 ( UTC ). 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Question: what is the biggest game company in the world
Answer: Sony Interactive Entertainment