Over the last two weeks of December, we are announcing the winners of the Second Annual SwitchRPG Awards. We’ll be announcing new winners every weekday, leading up to a final announcement on January 1st for RPG of the Year!

For our penultimate award, we’re honoring not an individual game release, but entire body of work put out by a single publisher this year. Our award for Best Publisher will go to the company that published multiple, high quality releases – whether they be a few outstanding titles or a long series of mixed releases that added bulk to the Switch’s RPG lexicon. Each of our nominees this year put out incredible titles, whether they be KEMCO’s stellar budget experiences (Alvastia Chronicles, Monochrome Order), NIS America’s epic releases and remasters (Disgaea 4 and Alliance Alive), Nintendo’s new, big budget titles (Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Pokémon Sword and Shield), or a mix of all three with Square Enix (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, SaGa, and more). Each of these publishers did RPG fans right this year, but only one will be recognized as the Best Publisher of 2019!

The Nominees

And the Winner Is…

Nintendo

An incredibly hard choice this year, considering the glut of quality RPGs pushed out by our nominees, but in the end, our staff settled on Nintendo for Best Publisher. Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Pokémon Sword and Shield were runaway RPG successes this year, taking the Switch playerbase by storm. But beyond these two fantastic releases, Nintendo also served as the publisher for Square Enix’s biggest release of the year: Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age. Without Nintedo’s backing, this phenomenal RPG may not have come to the Nintendo Switch in all its glory, depriving us of one the best RPGs of the generation. Ultimately, while Nintendo published only a small number of RPGs this year, they also were responsible for releasing three of our four RPG of the Year nominees, making them the clear winner for the award for Best Publisher!

Community Pick: Nintendo

One again, our community pick lines up perfectly with staff sentiment. Nintendo took the community poll for Best Publisher with a strong showing of 60 percent of the votes. Coming behind Nintendo was Square Enix, trailing with 31 percent. Falling far behind were NIS America and KEMCO, with seven and two percents respectively. Whatever any of our thoughts may be, no one can deny the strength of our nominees for this category, nor the incredible list of RPGs to hit our favorite console in 2019. Having had a chance review the impact of these titles and their publishers makes for perfect lead-in for our final award category – RPG of the Year!

Do you agree with our pick for Best Publisher, or do you think Nintendo’s releases this year are a bit overrated? Would you rather have seen another publisher take home the prize? Let us know in the comments, and come back this Wednesday, January 1, to kick off the new year with our award for Best RPG!