8th March 2010
Electronic Arts named NowGamer’s first Premiership Champion
Publishing giant is the inaugural winner of NowGamer.com Publishers’
Premiership award 2009.
NowGamer.com has today announced that Electronic Arts is the 2009
Publishers’ Premiership Champion, with Activision and Sony coming in
second and third place respectively.
The Publishers’ Premiership is a unique feature of the NowGamer.com
website, which charts the success, or otherwise, of every major
publisher in the games industry. It is based on NowGamer.com’s
extensive back catalogue of content – dating back over 14 years. The
Publishers’ Premiership table is live throughout the year, and is
calculated based on the score each game receives from NowGamer.com’s
reviewers and also bonus points for how many and the type of awards
that are given.
In 2009 NowGamer.com reviewed 53 of Electronic Arts’ games released
across all formats, with the publisher amassing an impressive 170,620
points. Activision finished the year with 112,530, while Sony’s 98,600
was enough to secure third place, just ahead of Ubisoft, which had a
strong end to the year with Assassin’s Creed II. The Publishers’
Premiership is an alternative view to the traditional sales-based
results analysis that publishers are typically judged on, and it is an
indication of the strength and output quality of the world’s games
companies.
Electronic Arts’s gaming highlights of 2009 included the chart-topping
and 9.0-scoring FIFA 10 on PS3 and Xbox 360, Left 4 Dead 2, which
scored 9.2 on Xbox 360, and the BioWare-developed RPG Dragon Age:
Origins, which was rated an amazing 9.4 on both Xbox 360 and PC. The
publisher also benefited from a host of awards for Rock Band 2, Henry
Hatsworth, The Beatles: Rock Band and Brütal Legend.
Thanks to the technology that runs NowGamer.com, the Publishers’
Premiership also retrospectively creates tables dating back to 1995.
Looking back at each year of the last decade, it reveals that
Electronic Arts – thanks to a consistently high number of games on
many formats and with a high average score – has managed to secure the
top slot no fewer than seven times.
Nick Jones, Editor in Chief of NowGamer.com and the NowGamerNetwork,
commented: “I’d like to congratulate EA on winning the first ever
NowGamer.com Publishers’ Premiership. The company has had a fantastic
year both critically and commercially and, judging by the games
already announced for this year, it looks like it’s going to take some
beating in 2010.”
Keith Ramsdale, VP and General Manager, UK for Electronic Arts
commented: “We’re absolutely delighted with this. It has been a stated
objective of ours for several years to raise our quality bar further
and to innovate across all our established franchises. We are also
committed to continue to break the mould with new IPs. Our studio and
publishing teams around the world will be deservedly proud of winning
NowGamer’s Publishers’ Premiership award, as it is rooted in rewarding
quality. We thank all our studios for their hard work but we also
thank NowGamer for this highly valued recognition and all the NowGamer
readers for continuing to play and enjoy our games.”
Imagine Publishing Managing Director Damian Butt added: “Electronic
Arts has become known for quality, innovation, and, in more recent
years, an unstoppable assault on all major formats with strong IPs.
Congratulations to EA for becoming our first Premiership Champion, and
it will be tremendously exciting in 2010 to watch its challengers
attempt to knock it from the top slot.
The full table can be seen at
www.nowgamer.com/premiership/hall-of-fame
Imagine Publishing is one of the UK’s fastest-growing consumer
specialist publishers. Formed in May 2005, Imagine now publishes 20
regular magazines and 30 websites in the videogames, computing,
entertainment, motoring and photography markets. An Imagine magazine
is purchased every ten seconds.
Imagine Publishing
01202 586200
www.nowgamer.com
Nick Jones
Editor in Chief
