Given how bad MS has been recently, I'm going to say the AMD performance issues was an accident. Ms has pretty much never put the effort into AMD as it does Intel.
Paid reviews... Maaaaaybe. They played games with the launch, games they didn't need and they have been doing all they could (incentives to OEMS) to stave off AMD, just like last time. As for power, it's a new design on a new scale, they even clarified power settings better than in the past. Not saying it's not still B.S. and some claim reviewers may have gotten golden samples, BUT... As production yields get better, those golden samples will become the norm.
My bigger concern is the problems with DRM and the power. Yes the golden samples will become the norm, but my concern is it could be an indication that Intel over-stretched in order to beat AMD. Is this design already max'd out in hopes it buys time to get to the next generation? The golden samples are good, but if the design has already peaked, that doesn't say much for when AMD does their next (DDR5) refresh and doesn't just reclaim the crown but runs away with it. Intel has done this sort of thing in the past and it did not go well. I just worry this is a holdover to buy time.
Also.. Let's talk about those efficiency cores...
Something I really think reviewers are doing a disservice about is that those "efficiency" cores*, while great in a laptop do they really matter in a desktop? In a laptop (and lesser degree servers) it makes sense as every watt matters but on a desktop saving a few watts on low stress applications doesn't really help anything except allow them to advertise how many "cores" it has and drop power draw on spec sheets. "Look we have 16 cores too(!)", so what if half are garbage for hardcore work. Intel knows multi core threading isn't all there yet so you can't always take full advantage of 16 cores but as multi-threading gets better and better this design is going to become more and more handicapped. Again, great idea for laptops, but on a desktop you don't care that much about low-to mid range power draw, only idle and raw power, the power stepping can handle the rest quite well.
Honestly, on desktop Intel would have been better to just settle for 12 full power cpu cores and then use hyper threading to split them into more efficient units. Why? Because if you have a limited number of threads, fewer, faster more powerfull cores are better. 12 threads at full power is better than 8 cores full power and 8 gimped cores because your multi-threading now has to not only split between 16 cores, it has to decide with goes to what and how rather than just 12 full power, equal cores. Think of it this way, it has to make 2 decisions per core, that's 32 options (ignoring hyperthreading) as opposed to simply 12 equal options. Add in hyperthreading and now you have 64 options vs 24. How much does it matter? On early Ryzen it could eat up one entire core in a 16core cpu just to decide where to send things, what's it going to use on these new chips? It's a fast CPU, but it's fast in spite of this design choice, not because of it.
*I can't really blame reviewers, they haven't had the time to really evaluate these chips and I could be wrong but I suspect this will be born out at some point. I see this whole thing for desktop as marketing fluff.