Game Developer Research's 'Top 20 Publishers 2009' stays the same

The industry analysts at Game Developer Research could have saved themselves a whole mess of time and money by releasing the following statement in lieu of the latest edition of their annual Top 20 Publishers report: "See previous year." Differentiation from last year's top five ranks -- which, let's be honest, are the only ones you really care about -- is almost non-existent: Nintendo placed first (again), EA came in second (again), Activision Blizzard followed in third (again), Ubisoft retained its fourth place position (again), and Take-Two moved up from sixth to fifth, bumping Sony out of the top five.

The full, totally unsurprising list -- which was calculated based on number of games released, average review scores for said games and estimated revenue for each company -- can be found after the jump. Comments stating why Publisher A is still infinitely better than Publisher B can be found further below.

[Via Gamasutra]

1. Nintendo

2. Electronic Arts

3. Activision Blizzard

4. Ubisoft

5. Take-Two

6. Sony Computer Entertainment

7. Bethesda Softworks

8. THQ

9. Square Enix

10. Microsoft

11. Konami

12. Sega

13. Capcom

14. MTV Games

15. Namco Bandai Games

16. Warner Bros. Interactive

17. Disney Interactive

18. Atari

19. Atlus

20. LucasArts