IGN: "Wii Music a Hit: We Have Failed"

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@thekitchensink: I think there are various reasons.

Now if we take this particular example the topic is about, it clearly indicates IGN dissappointing about them not being able to form opinions for people (media - the third world might), propably unlike they thought, which could be causing some sort of counterreaction. Although, they do get hits this way.

Again, related to the previous point, reviewers thinking they can somehow influence the publishers/developers, which again just wants to put the press to keep some noise (Nintendo didn't appologise us -> we say nasty things about Wii Music. We even pull your mother into it!) to have someone react.

The homogenous userbase, of the games sites. When the users demand in advance "game x" to be bashed, that's what they get. Readers are happy and keep visiting. This of course leads to stagnantation of the userbase.

The advertisers who put out ads gets "better" treatment by nature and even more when they blackmail the sites (as we know the case with Ubisoft).

If we compare today to the time when the primary form of games media were the magazines, the feedback had much bigger delay and people didn't whine about everything. You got angry letters if you really insulted someone, today when you write something that someone doesn't like, you get angry comments on the comments section, followed by dozen fanboys who spam the comments.
Also, as people so fondly tend to remember Nintendo Power, that magazine had only one purpose; to sell more games, so the reviews were written based on the games core functionality, which was the fun factor and the reviews were made to point out the fun in the game. Since it's a foregone businessmodel (today they want to sell ads), they don't have the incentive to make the kind of reviews, but to push their own agenda on what kind of games the platform(s) should have.

@sethnintendo: They don't exist if they don't adopt the new audience, which, btw, is risky. I have one good example how you can fail.
It was 1990 when Nintendo-lehti (the local Nintendo Power copy) started. In 1992, around the time of SNES release, the magazines publisher started another magazine, Super Power, which differentiated itself from Nintendo-Lehti by different page size, not having comics and having domestic reviews. The reason for another magazine was propably to kill the competition in advance, since the market was growing. In 1994, the publisher ran into situation where it needed to end one of the magazines and going by the reader feedback, they ended Nintendo-Lehti (they fucks, Super Mario World and Link to the Past comics were left right in the middle). Not that much after, when PSX was starting to explode in popularity, Super Power was made as a multiplatform magazine (they dropped their 100% Nintendo slogan) reviewing Nintendo consoles and PSX games. Then, sometime after, the plug was pulled from Super Power too.

So, what happened in the above example was, that you went to the direction your customers want, after that went after the new audience only to see that the new audience doesn't have interest in you.
Basically the same situation may be the case with the current gaming media, so they want to stick to their core users.

I stopped caring about reviews when they started to contradict my preferences and the reviews turned into less informative (from the Nintendo Power model) and focusing into irrelevancies outside the fun.

Reviews and scores work very well in certain context, which is the site core visitors and as a score given each game individually, not in the way "this ones better, it has to have better score" (read Rocketpigs "This one goes to eleven" from news section for preference, he nails the issue).