We’re now in the land of delusion where Microsoft accounts are not Xbox accounts. It’s he same thing.
Exactly the same thing, yes, (EDIT: not according to
Topher
) but we've been signing to them on playstation for years to play Minecraft with friends for instance and therefore being counted in the MAUs for quite some time already. Nothing new or unique about it. It's the bizarre
trojan horse and
turning ps5 users into xbox users revelation that people seem to be having issues with - your framing leading to them questioning the sincerity in making a thread and choosing that title.
Playstation players signing in to microsoft accounts mandatorily when the game dictates or voluntarily in order to obtain benefits/perks doesn't turn them into anything, but they do become MAUs of MS's network at the same time. That's honestly not in any way a big deal - MS is a big 3rd party publisher now and MAUs are obviously back on the menu as they're a useful metric when evaluating a variety of facets of that kind of business. PS5 users aren't changing state or becomming anything they were previously not, they are still ps5 players who also get tallied in MS network MAUs.
In the case of MS accounts they are the same. When you play SOT with a MS account you’re accumulating Xbox playtime and unlocking. Xbox achievements. This has been explained multiple times in this thread.
Spencer says there are three pillars of xbox; they're a publisher of games, a platform for which other publishers can create & sell games and a hardware platform. Saying "xbox", though, will still only register as the console/hardware platform for most and that's likely to be the case for some time until hardware ceases. Players sign in to their network same as they do with any big 3rd party's online accounts these days, and that's so their behaviour and actions can be tracked and analysed, it's all valuable data. From a player's perspective, that MS keeps a tally of hours played and tracks achievements for identical trophies obtained on playstation is wholly irrelevant. He might have put it a bit more crudely than I might have, but what
GHG
said was not incorrect...
Why would this excite anyone other than Microsoft executives and corporate cocksuckers?
It certainly will not register with the average ps5 player sat playing at pirate ships, they won't ever know such things are happening and likely wouldn't care if they did. So why should anyone else other than MS suits? (and. of course, the corporate dong chongers).
You know what, I think this is just the first time
ManaByte
has personally experienced this type of cross-platform account system so he got excited. Maybe if he played any games other than Sea of Thieves he may have noticed earlier.
That might be it. This isn't exceptional or new as such. Popping achievements that match trophies might be seen as revelatory now, for some at least, but it's kinda inherent when the game stores progress on universal servers... it'd be harder to prevent than anything.
tl;dr A player popping trophies and achievements simultaneously while playing a MS game on a PS does not mean they turned into an xbox user, if anything it just proves how much MS likes data they can work with. A slightly different thread title and a take more in line with just stating "all these ps5 players are now MS MAUs" would probably have resulted in less pushback that the
trojan horse and
turning into stuff did.