Sony is very confident in the success of its studios and the Brazilian Rafael Grassetti, former Santa Monica art director on God of War, talked about this in a participation in the Flow Games Podcast. According to him, the company demands "at least" a 90 score on Metacritic from its major studios like Santa Monica and Naughty Dog.
Within the company, there is a whole division that specifically takes care of this topic. Games need to go through deeper analysis to achieve higher scores, as he explained. Grassetti confirmed that these reviews are important to the studios, that he is against random reviewers being allowed on Metacritic and denied the existence of an "extra" payment based on score performances. In fact, bonuses are geared toward sales figures.
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I hate Metacritic culture, I wish Sony wasn't obsessed with it