NowGamer.com

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.

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