Xbox CTO Scott Van Vliet has admitted what reviewers have been grumbling about for years: getting a game reviewed on Xbox is a faff. In a post on X in the early hours of 28 October, he said the team is working towards a simple “redeem and play” setup for press and creators, with the first updates “coming soon”.
Reviewing a game on XBOX takes too many steps today. Press and creators should be able to redeem and play, and that's what the team is ultimately building toward. The first updates are coming soon.
— Scott Van Vliet (@scottvanvliet) October 28, 2026
What sparked it
The post landed hours after a Windows Central report by Jennifer Young pointed out an awkward one for Microsoft. Infinity Ward was celebrating Metacritic scores for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, but the Xbox Series X version didn’t have a Metascore at all. It was sitting at “tbd”, based on just two critic reviews. For a Microsoft-owned blockbuster, that’s not a great look.
Windows Central blamed the review process itself rather than any lack of interest in Xbox. Reviewers are usually offered a choice of platforms and take the path of least resistance, and elsewhere that tends to mean redeeming a code and getting on with it. On Xbox, according to the report, you have to dig your Xbox Live Device ID out of the developer and system settings, hand it to a PR company, and then wait for the publisher to manually whitelist your individual console before a code or build will even work.
With tight embargoes and a packed release schedule at this time of year, those extra steps add up, so even people who’d happily cover the Xbox version often end up going elsewhere. Windows Central argued that the knock-on effect becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: fewer Xbox reviews means scores stuck at “TBD”, which makes it look like nobody’s playing on Xbox, even when the game is published by Microsoft itself.
It’s not all doom, mind. The report noted that Gears of War: E-Day, which was accessible through an insider build on the dashboard, ended up with a much healthier 87 Xbox reviews. Windows Central was clear that this isn’t the norm, though.
What happens next
Van Vliet didn’t say what the first updates will be or when they’ll arrive, only that they’re coming soon and that “redeem and play” is where the team is ultimately heading. Windows Central has since updated its report with his post.
Our take: I think this is a good move, and it would be good across everything Xbox, as Xbox reviews take longer to come out. – Duncan
