Ranking Third Party Studios

Exclusive games can help players decide where they should play based on where their favourite franchise is and we have already taken a look at ranking Xbox Game Studios as well as PlayStation Studios in our first two instalments. Outside of exclusive games there is a plethora of third party studios developing amazing experiences on these consoles. Often times, these third party titles become some of the greatest selling games of the year just like how Call of Duty has been one of the best selling games every year. This made me wonder just how third party studios stack up against one another.

It can also be hard to separate smaller studios inside big conglomerates, so for the most part we will try to separate the smaller studios that are more well known including ranking DICE and Respawn seperately even though they are owned by EA. Another example is rating Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics separately, even though they are both owned by Square Enix.

For this instalment of studio rankings we are going to take a look big budget third party studios, meaning that even those most of these studios are technically independent, we are going to focus on the bigger studios and save actual smaller indie studios for another list.

Rules

Since defining what exactly is a third party studio that is independent differs from what is an indie studio, it will be important to lay out some rules for this list as always.

Rule 1: No one hit wonders! We are only going to be including studios with at least two games on their resume.

Rule 2: The studio needs to be fairly active, which means that only studios with at least two games over the past decade would be included.

Rule 3: There will be a recency bias. This means that the last effort means the most and carries more weight towards the studios final score. This will be achieved by multiplying the most recent release score by 1.1.

Rule 4: No VR or mobile games will be included, no matter how good or bad, only core releases.

Rule 5: This list will be console focused meaning that the release of a game needs to be primarily consoles based. This means a studio like Riot with recent releases that include Valorant won’t be included on this list as that game as well as the rest of their games are PC focus.

Rule 6: No remakes only original entries. This means that games like Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, although it did help Bioware’s reputation won’t be included on the list.

Rule 7: Many studios do collabs with other studios but only games that are wholly developed by the studio will be calculated. This means a game like Rage 2 that was co developed by Avalance and ID won’t be included when calculating the score of Avalanche.

Rule 8: No annualized sports instalments.

Worthy Mentions

With likely hundreds if not thousands of third party development studios, this list would take forever if we tried to rank every single one, which is why the focus is on the high budget and high profile studios. For the list we are going to be only discussing the top five studios based on their calculated rating, but there will be a few studios that just missed the mark of being included in the top five. It seems only fair to give them a little time in the spotlight.

Just missing the top five is a tale of two cities with CD Projekt Red on the downward slope with the very publicly maligned CyberPunk 2077. On the flip side you have a studio like Remedy coming off a very strong release with Control in 2019 that have put them into the mainstream spotlight after the Xbox One exclusive Quantum Break failed to catch fire with the movie/game hybrid style. Finally you also have a studio like Eidos Montreal that has shown consistency with Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Shadow of the Tomb Raider but will likely move down with their upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy based as it doesn’t look to be an upper echelon title. These are three studios that just missed the top five.

Top 5 Third Party Studios

Before diving into the Top 5 third party studios, it’s important to remember that there are likely many studios that were forgotten from the list but we did our best to include as many of the big players in the gaming industry as we could think off. This is also not definitive but always just fun to make lists as a talking point and hopefully you have some fun.

5th Place - IOI - 88.25

Just beating out Bungie by a hair is IO Interactive who have become well known for the Hitman series. A series that has had its share of ups and downs over the years since its initial release back in the year 2000 but over the past three entires have released arguably some of the best the series has ever seen. IOI has primarily focused on Hitman with eight of their 12 games developed have featured Agent 47.

When Hitman saw a reboot in 2016 with an episodic nature it was met with mixed reception as many thought the product felt unfinished. In retrospect, when judging Hitman as a full package it was a very solid reboot of the franchise that was the seedling for two solid sequels, both of which abandoned the episodic release schedule. Releasing in episodes wasn’t all bad news as it always kept Hitman in the conversation which would pay dividends for the subsequent releases.

It has been an adventurous two decades for IOI as they have been owned by both Eidos Interactive and Square Enix, but after Square felt the studio underperformed with Hitman, started seeking a buyer for the studio. Fortunately, IOI was in a place where they were able to reacquire their independence and on top of that retain the rights to the Hitman franchise. For Hitman 3, IO was able to self publish and reap the rewards of all of the years of hard work. Not only is Hitman 3 on the short list for game of the year 2021, but after just a week of release and thanks to self publishing the studio was able to recoup its development costs.

This feels like an underdog who has been trying very hard and its great to see their hard work finally pay off. It was clearly more than just fans and critics taking notice at IOI’s recent high quality Hitman trilogy, as shortly after the release of Hitman 3, the studio announced a new partnership with MGM to develop a James Bond game. Based on the quality of the recent Hitman entries, 007 might finally see some success again in the gaming market. Not much is known about what fans can expect but based on their releases since 2000, it would be very safe to assume a third person adventure is in the works. Also based on their recent trajectory over the past generation it would be safe to assume that it should be excellent as well.

4th Place - Respawn 88.5

Respawn’s existence as a studio is still quite short, however in just over a decade the story of this studio is many chapters. Respawn started out as a few leads that worked at Infinity Ward that created the biggest revolutionary change in FPS since Halo launched alongside the Xbox. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare changed the game and became a critical and commercial success for the studio and every shooter after was trying to capture the modern military magic that Infinity Ward did in 2007. After some lengthy contract troubles and legal battles with Activision, it all ended with an out of court settlement in 2010.

Out of the ashes, the independent studio Respawn was formed by Jason West and Vince Zampella. Shortly after there was a mass exodus of employees leaving Infinity Ward to join the pair at Respawn Entertainment. Four years later and some funding from EA, TitanFall was released as an Xbox exclusive that featured an incredible balance between giant mechs and human pilots as well as an amazing traversal system with jet packs and wall running. Whether due to the exclusivity deal with Microsoft or the essentially multiplayer only element of the game, Titanfall wasn’t quite the success that many were hoping it would be.

The good news is that the game did well enough to warrant a sequel, which would be released just a little over two short years later. Leading up to the release of Titanfall 2, it seemed like people would finally take notice of just how amazing the series was and the team at Respawn was. This was all thanks to the game being multi-platform for the sequel as well as a full campaign being included.

Unfortunately, Titanfall 2 missed the mark again, with many attributing its failure to the launch window that EA decided to release the game in. It was sandwiched right in between two of the biggest and well established shooter franchises Call of Duty and Battlefield. Despite having one of the best single player FPS campaigns ever with some of the best mechanics in a FPS ever, Titanfall 2 underperformed and the series has been dormant ever since.

In 2017, after being independent for seven years, Respawn was acquired by EA for up to $164 million dollars, which looking back at some of the other acquisitions that have happened in the gaming landscape over the past decade and seeing how things have played out with Respawn since, feels like a bargain price.

Post EA acquisition, Respawn has released the ultra successful Apex Legends that surprise dropped as a free to play Battle Royale with legend abilities that separated it from the competition. It also included some mobility that Titanfall was known for. Respawn has continued to support Apex making it a pillar of EA’s portfolio. Respawn also showed their ability to craft more than just FPS with the release of Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, which was on the short list as one of the best games of 2019.

The great news moving forward with Respawn is that since their formation they have continued to grow and expand meaning that more projects from the studio will happen on a higher frequency and their last release was 2019’s Fallen Order, meaning that new projects from the team are likely on the near horizon.

3rd Place - Capcom - 90.2

Capsule Computers or as we all know them, Capcom have been around since the 1970’s but it wasn’t until the mid to late eighties when the company released games that would go on to be classics such as Street Fighter, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Mega Man and 1942 that they would gain a reputation for quality games. Capcom would continue to create world class franchises including Resident Evil and Monster Hunter which have combined to sell almost two hundred millions units.

Over the last four decades Capcom has had plenty of ups and downs but as of right now seems to be constantly on the upwards trajectory. It wasn't that long ago that Capcom seemed to be losing their magic touch. This is best exemplified with Resident Evil. The farther Resident Evil moved away from survival horror and became more action focused, it became boring and uninspired. Gamers are still looking for grounded experiences but Resident Evil 5 and to a greater degree, Resident Evil 6 took the series away from everything that made it special in the beginning.

This caused an inflection point for the makers of Resident Evil to go back to the drawing board and see what made the series popular at first. Despite commercial sales of Resident Evil 6, Capcom clearly had data showing that the fanbase was falling away. This paved the way for the series to hit the reset button with Resident Evil 7 and go back to the basics of the series with one big change. The move to first person perspective although seemingly odd at first, suited the series very well. Resident Evil 7 started in a small confined plantation house with average protagonist out of his elements dealing with an unknown horror. These are all parallels to the formula of the original Resident Evil.

RE7 did critically and commercially well as it has just been announced that it has crossed the 10 million copies sold to date and has an average review score of 86. Rebooting Resident Evil and going back to the roots probably wasn’t an easy decision as it forced Capcom into making a bold new engine for the series but this has paid great dividends as the company decided to remake RE2 from the ground up using the RE Engine.

Resident Evil 2 Remake was a smashing commercial and critical success. The remake sold over 3 million copies in its first week alone and currently has an average review score of 91. Capcom has since remade Resident Evil 3 using the same engine and in 2021 released Resident Evil 8 which followed in the success of Resident Evil 7. Village has since sold over 4.5 million copies as of the end of June 2021, which is pretty great for just under two months.

Moving forward Capcom seems to have plenty of IP in its catalogue to continue on this upwards climb. Their 2018 reboot of Mega Man with Mega Man 11 leaves the door open for a sequel with some improvements and updates. Resident Evil has seen a renaissance since the release of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in 2017 and has seen great critical and commercial response since. Monster Hunter has plenty of options with releases exclusively on the Nintendo Switch with Monster Hunter Rise and elsewhere with Monster Hunter World and seeing great success all over that the options are very much open. You could make a long list of IP that Capcom should create a new entry in but the point is that they have plenty of options in terms of revisting some of their dormant IP such as Marvel vs Capcom or Lost Planet but they also have enough success with their current hits that the future is bright for the studio.

2nd Place - FROMSOFTWARE - 94

If there is one company on this list that seems to have the most devoted fan base and avid defenders it would easily be FROMSOFTWARE who has over the past decade gone from something of a cult favourite developers to the mainstream. FROMSOFTWARE has been developing games since the early 90’s but remained largely unknown for the majority of gamers until 2009 when they released Demon’s Souls. They followed up the success of this title with Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, however it seems that the company was taken to another echelon when they released the PS4 exclusive BloodBorne in 2015. It kept everything that the Souls games were known for but it added a slight level of accessibility not only with its lore of Yharnam but with a slightly more forgiving combat system that increased the speed and agility of the player.

This growing knowledge of who FROMSOFTWARE was thanks to the releases of the souls series and BloodBorne resonated with commercial sales for Dark Souls 3 with publisher Bandai Namco announcing a little over a month later that the game had sold over three million copies and as of today the game has sold over 10 million copies. This was a marked improvement from BloodBorne which sold around 2 million copies in its first year. Word of mouth was constantly growing for this studio.

Mainstream success not only gained new fans and buyers of their games but it also garnered attention of larger publishers and as a result their last game, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was published by Activision. As expected Sekiro fell in line with the rest of FROMSOFTWARE’s offerings rating in the 90’s or above from most outlets and even ended up winning best Action/Adventure game from The Game Awards in 2019. The rising sales trend continued as Sekiro sold over two million copies in just its first ten days.

Looking ahead is the highly anticapted Elden Ring that features collaboration with Game of Thrones author, George R. R. Martin. Publishing has returned to Bandai Namco and the game doesn’t look like a far departure for what the studio has been known for, meaning that it would be a fairly safe bet to assume that Elden Ring will score in the 90’s and will sell around 2 million copies in its first week. The biggest change with Elden Ring looks to be the addition of exploration as a key pillar of the titles as opposed to gaining skills and levelling up through combat, although it’s a safe assumption that combat will be hard as nails.

FROMSOFTWARE are easily one of the safest bets in the video game industry. Their products are familiar yet different enough from one another and they always feature a solid foundation of game mechanics and world building. FROMSOFTWARE is also one of the smaller studios that was considered for best third party studio with just over 300 employees, which means that they are fighting well above their weight class, like most of the characters in their games and i’m sure a parallel can be drawn between how they feel as a studio and the characters they create.

1st Place - Rockstar Games - 101.85

There was never any doubt that Rockstar Games was going to be the top studio on the list. Since Grand Theft Auto hit the scene in 1999, Rockstar has been making headlines for good or bad but one thing has become constant with the studio: Their games are not just important in the gaming world but they hit the mainstream as well. GTAV became the fastest selling entertainment product in history by earning 800 million in its first day and broke 1 Billion in just three days.

It also is a testament to just how well liked Grand Theft Auto 5 was as well as GTA Online is that this game continues to be ported to everything since its original release in 2013 on the PS3 and Xbox 360 with phenomenal sales that have accumulated to over 150 million copies sold, which was reported in TTWO annual report, making it the second best selling game of all time. This is only behind Minecraft which is much more family friendly and much more widely accessible on everything including Mobile and Nintendo Switch.

The fact that GTAV was released two generation of consoles ago and will be ported to the PS5 and Xbox Series and will sell very well shows just how ahead of its time the game and the technology was that almost decade later it won’t look out of place among new releases for the new next gen consoles.

The studio has become known for much more than just GTA as numerous franchises have been successful including Midnight Club, Max Payne and obviously Red Dead. In 2018, Rockstar released the western masterpiece Red Dead Redemption 2. While not on the same mainstream level as GTA, RDR2 released with phenomenal commercial success. It wasn’t all positive as many felt the game was two slow and considered the game boring as the game forced slow walking in many areas to increase the realism and immersion in the story as opposed to running through an important plot point.

People that were upset with RDR2 were a drop in the bucket compared to the people that were enamoured with the masterpiece. RDR2 has managed to sell over 38 million copies and currently has an average rating of 97. Every bit of RDR2 oozed with polish and care from the visuals, story, voice acting, score and everything in between.

Looking ahead for the studio there is the next gen versions of GTAV that will release in 2022, GTA Online which is an obvious cash cow for the company that will continue to be largely supported and the recently announced GTA Trilogy: The Definitive Edition that will feature GTA3, San Andreas, and Vice City. There has also been recent speculation that GTA6 is deep in production but like all of Rockstar’s other titles, require lengthy development with RDR2 taking approximately 8 years. The anticipated date for GTA6 is 2024 or 2025.

Best Third Party Studios

There you have it the top five rated third party gaming studios. Not only are these the top five rated and consistent gaming studios around right now but looking at the top five, the future only looks brighter for every studio on the list.

High Profile Third nominees

Respawn - Apex Legends (89) + Fallen Order (80x1.1) = 88.5

FROMSOFTWARE -Dark Souls 3 (89)+ Sekiro (90x1.1) = 94

CDPRJOEKCT - Witcher 3 (92) + CyberPunk 2077 (68x1.1) = 83.4

BIOWARE - Anthem (59x1.1) + Mass Effect Andromeda 73 = 68.95

Rockstar - GTA V (97) + RDR2 - (97x1.1) = 101.85

Ubisoft Immortals Fenix (79) + Far Cry 6 (78x1.1) = 82.4

Crystal Dynamic, Rise of the Tomb (86) + Marvels Avengers (70x1.1) = 81.5

Eidos Montreal - Deus Ex Mankind Divided (83) + Shadow of the Tomb (79x1.1) = 84.95

Avalanche - Just Cause 3 (72) + Just Cause 4 (67x.1.1) = 72.85

Bungie - Destiny (76) + Destiny 2 (86x1.1) =85.3

Capcom - Resident Evil Village (84x1.1) + Monster Hunter Rise (88) = 90.2

Remedy - Quantum Break (77) + Control (83x1.1) = 84.15

Gearbox - BattleBorn (70) + Borderlands 3 (80x1.1) = 79

IOI - Hitman 2 (83) + Hitman 3 (85x1.1) =88.25