It doesn't seem unexpected to me. It's pretty much the name of the game for long term customer aquistion, data analytics, and what not. Sony is doing the same with their games on PC now. Microsoft accounts on PS seems like a simple case of cause and effect. I don't think they affect Xbox hardware long term anymore than the current strategy does, but rather that for a company like Microsoft it'd be rather foolish for them to not make use of putting their online live service games on more platforms and requiring Ms accounts. Rather, I'm guessing from this that previous Xbox games on PS didn't have that requirement (it sounds like it was just optional) and I find that really surprising. I expect there to be backlash from PS gamers, idk from my completely biased perspective console gamers seem to care less about this sort of stuff than PC gamers.
Wasn't it reported on this website that long term Microsoft wanted to create a battle net like cross account experience across all platforms? I think one day probably not too far away we'll see Xbox Cloud saves the norm on Steam and Playstation and Nintendo platforms, but I don't think that means Xbox will give up on its first party experiences (hardware and the Xbox PC app) . Rather so long as they are expanding, why not make the most of it?
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