[RaychelSnr]

Again, the only refute is to simply discredit review scores? That's a gigantic assumption that the business is incredibly corrupted and EA (or other companies for that matter) is paying off reviewers to score their games better. Remember the scores I use are taken from a few dozen review sites, so you would have to assume EA is paying off all of those sites for the average to be higher, which makes no sense.

Perhaps the reason why reviewers as a whole score a game higher (any game) is because that game is simply better at reaching the buying audience -- who the reviewers represent -- than another?

You listed a bunch of the assumptions I just showed aren't true as well, which makes no sense.

Again: budget, time of development and talent developing the game. They're all much bigger in determining the final quality of a game. Competition MAY play a role in those three factors, but I would submit the drive to make a bigger profit no matter what the competition is drives those decisions even more.