That claim itself is false having followed Edge for around 2 decades now, their scores have very much been in line with other outlets.

Too much salt is no good for the poor guy.

Your first point may be correct, but you provide no information other than you have followed edge for two decades. Then your second point strains the validity of your first point as Edge most definetly do not fall in line with other outlets.

• 15%higher than the average critic
• 3%same as the average critic
• 82%lower than the average critic

Actually no they're in line with other critics you know why because their rating scaling is different from other outlets for Edge 5/10 is average and this is something many people don't understand when they see their ratings. 5/10 from them is the same as 7/10 from other outlets, they're not notoriously harsh that's a misconception they just use different scaling.

So the outlier is actually in line, provided you assume a unique rating system for them alone.

You judge this by sentiment of the reviews in line with other publications? or you apply all other systems the same rating and base Edge scores off of that? 
So an IGN score of 5-5.9 which is mediocre, how does that compare to EDGE 5 of average? Is it actually a 7? an IGN Good? Or is that actually an Edge 6 which is competent?

No dude you can argue with yourself for all I care the outlier is in their scaling when this is taken into account their scores match other outlets just fine as many have 6/7 as average as their scale. When people see a 6/10 from Edge they see it as a bad score when they're saying the game is above average and so on, 7/10 is good on their scale and this is a frequent score when a game is getting 8/9s elsewhere, on their scaling the score is in line with other outlets.

Being an industry magazine the spots 8-10 constitute games that have an innovative aspect to them as well as quality.

So a 10/10 of EDGE is like a 14/10 to other sites?

I dont know man...he just gave you the statistics, hard to go against factual arguments.

The usual from people who don't understand Edge's scaling, Edge score games on not just game quality but innovation, art direction, tech use, audio and such because they're an industry mag this is why they have scaling from 5/10. A 10/10 from them is a game that ticks every box otherwise they'll simply rate it as either a 7/10 or 8/10 which is a really good game.

This is why those who comment on Edge best inform themselves on them first as giving stats on their score when you don't understand how they score games and why should get that it is futile to look at them the same way as other outlets as Edge is written for those in the industry as opposed to standard consumers just stick to commenting on IGN and other outlets you're used to if you don't get their approach.