With that said I think it says something that people think a 7 is a bad score.
As Swen said in one of his GDC talks, the closer the game is to 9.0 in mainstream media the better are the sales. Even decimals.
Of course, it is EA, but it is concerning for Larian. Initial sales are based on hype, if they want to sell more they have to deliver a solid product.
In gamespot poll, 57% is waiting for the final version.
Is this an example of a review to trust?
It is the same media that gave DOS2 a 10/10 and has been marketing BG3. So their opinion matters and is influential.
Alanah Pearce who's a former IGN journalist talked about game journalism a while back and she mentioned that reviews basically don't affect sales at all and I've seen a lot of articles about this before based on research on game reviews and sales.
IGN for example has a lot of sponsor deals but they don't really get that many views on their reviews in the grand scheme of things and they're also a walking meme.
They're more of a marketing arm of the game industry, it's more about exposure.
And very few make their purchase decisions based on these reviews, it's very rare that anyone is swayed one way or the other.
It's also worth noting that AAA games tend to get 9's a lot more often too which are obviously going to sell more, it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy and IGN mostly reviews big titles.
If game reviews did affect sales to any noticable effect then game publishers would be a lot scummier about it and actively try and pay off and pressure reviewers but it doesn't really happen it's more of a myth.
And the people that even visit these sites and especially engage with them is a very tiny group of people, even less when you account for actual target demographics for specific games.
