I'm just not convinced that the cpu is worse overall..  I think it might have twice the threads per core compared to 360 and more cache. Yes the clock speeds are lower but it may provide superior performace with optimisation.

The silicon area difference is pretty huge - 3x. Performance per transistor or per watt shouldn't vary much from the same company on the same process despite any technology improvements since. I mean 5% extra performance per area is something Intel spends tens of billions of R&D to achieve these days. 300% more area won't be slower. It's about the same size as the netbook CPU Intel Atom.

Also the 360 core is heavily software optimised as it has been the lead platform for seven years.

With games we have a pretty good baseline idea of what reviews mean.  There are hundreds of games released a year, so we can come to some general idea of what makes a quality game, a bad game, and so on.  There is a bit of subjectivity, but ultimately, people can see a score of 7.6 and get a general idea of how good the game is, or at least how good the particular reviewer feels a game is.  Ditto for movies.

With cars, every car is going to basically do the same things.  Get you from point A to point B safely.  Cars enjoy similar feature sets and similar capabilities, and it is quite easy to compare different models. 

With game consoles, it's a silly thing.  The quality of the experience a console offers is almost completely dependent on software.  Mario Galaxy is the highest rated game of all time despite sporting the weakest hardware.  Control inputs are different, and features are different.  BUT the most important thing is the frequency of consoles.  In general we have 3-4 major consoles per generation.  Reviews are used to determine how good something is in relation to its peers, but the Wii U doesn't have many peers.  What is IGN comparing it to?  The X-Box 360 and the PS3?  The Wii?  The unannounced next X-Box and Playstation?  What the hell does a 7.6 mean in this context?  What would be an 8.0 console be?  A 9.0?  A 10.0?  A 5.0?  What would any of that mean.

And what are we judging the Wii U on?  Its launch games?  What if we rated the PS3 based on Genji and its gimped Madden ports?  What if we judged the DS by Spiderman 2 and Feel the Magic?  Or have we already figured out exactly what to expect from the Wii U, and we're judging it based on the unannounced project that they expect will come?

I'm all for text based reviews that let us know what to expect from the Wii U now, but slapping a number on it is silly and meaningless.  Ultimately, it's an arbitrary number that has no basis in reality, and no value in telling gamers how good or bad the system is. The Wii U being a 7.6 console tells us nothing really useful.

i could understand using the 1 to 10 scale, but the .6 its just stupid
why do they use de3cimals????!?!

Yeah so true, Ps3 wasn't well recieved when it launched but if it was to be reviewed now it would be getting way better scores, console providers can patch most the issues. The only one that will be hard to fix in the case of the WiiU review would be gamepad requiring outlet charge.

also the only 2 complaints are really superficial, they lowered 2.5 the score for that?? i mean i would take maybe a point, but a 7 and a half just because voice chat is a mess??
COME ON!

a WiiU review with a score!?

WTF IGN!? seriously, this is dumb....

for the record, the reviewer is an idiot, IMO. for how do you take away a point for the console not being able to charge through the console. I mean, wouldn't it be smarter to take away a point for the seemingly slow processor? God forbid if you had to buy batteries for the Gamepad! Talk about nitpicking.

And by the way, CPU speed almost means nothing, because the PS3 had a faster CPU than the 360, but because of the 360's overall better architecture, it performed just as well and in some cases (Skyrim) outperformed the PS3. Taking that into account, maybe the Wii U also has a superior architecture, albeit slower CPU, than the PS3. I am sure when we get a decent 3rd party (not THQ) to max out the Wii U, that game would not run properly on the PS3 or 360!

Totally agree, you can't put a score on something which is going to change in value (increase!) with time

You can say "don't buy it now" but that score doesn't really mean much in 3 months time when there are more games, or in 1 year when there are even even more games. Unless they want to keep updating the review with updates and new games, that score is just pointless

I have tried to embed a video from polygon.com but that did not work so here is the link

http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/18/3660470/wii-u-review