Personally I feel like all outlets, whether game outlets or technical outlets, should buy their own units. Avoids any sort of uncertainty or pressure between the marketing part and the consumer review parts of the chain. If a reviewer feels like the RT is of minor interest compared to the overall rasterization capabilities of the machine, then it's not surprising that it's being relegated off. That's an editorial decision. Then you can of course criticize the outlet for that choice, citing various argumentation. However, company strong-arming just makes the whole relationship suspicious across the board.
Reviews of games often gloss over important strengths of a game, unique aspects that competitive brands don't have and we usually react calling out the review. Of course, some of the companies do now and then blacklist outlets because they don't give them the marketing focus they personally want, time after time.
The solution should just to allow outlets to purchase an earlier copy of a hardware/software, in order to have a review in time. Thus the financial relationship is practically gone. Of course, there are other aspects of the relationship, like industry contacts, networking for future job prospects and preview experiences and events, that might further muddy the waters as well.
This also regards other online influencers, like that interesting Cyberpunk 2077 chair thread, which further makes for interesting view of how overall problematic a lot of relations in the industry can become.