Really, the PS3 has 19 games with a 90 or above, just 6 are exclusives.

wow. higher than i thought.

This. I don't think if it was exclusive it would have gotten any higher. I think the reason for it being loew is that it's releasing very late in the gen for a "first" Final Fantasy and isn't bringing much new compared to older games in the series or genre... at least from what I've read. The huge spate of quality WRPGs may also have made some reviewers make comparisons where the lack of innovation may stick out and docked points accordingly. The linearity at the beginning might also make some reviewers lower the score.

Either way, I'm still getting it., lol. I will say I'm looking forward to finding out more on Vs XIII now as a lot of the info released on XIII hasn't got me very excited. Hopefully when I play the game with my currently low expectations it'll blow me away instead.

93 + 90 + 85 + 85 + 81 + 79 + 70 = 583.

583/7 = 83.2

I'm aware that metacritic weight certain reviewers higher than others when calculating the average, but this leaves a possibility that metacritic give such a higher weighting to the official playstation magazine, which is just wrong...

Game scores have a tendency to drop in Metacritic, not go up. The initial reviews always seem to be the highest as the fanboy core of reviewers who were chomping at the bit to play that specific game get their reviews posted first. From there, less "interested" parties review the games and seem to give it lower scores.

But since FF is currently sitting in the mid-80s, it could hold steady or even go up a tick or two but I wouldn't hold my breath over it.

Actually I've found that the official magazines of all the consoles are relatively fair in their reviews. Really, if they weren't than they wouldn't get any sales and they would lose a lot of face.

Or it might be game informer which is heavily weighted.

It wont matter either way if FF XIII gets AAA or not. If it gets AAA haters would shout "Bias, Overhype", etc, If it scores below 90% average haters would use metacritic as proof of their claims. Funny how that works.

I would hype it if it was Ps3 exclusive, really? It's just made by the team that made the worst FF, it's linear and doesn't have many towns (just like FFX) and Square has sacrificed a lot of the quality of FF titles just to streamline it and make it more popular. This would be the worst FF even if it was exclusive.

You mean the best or one of the best, right? 'Cause the worst FF is either IX or XII.