Passive aggressive, a term I see you use a lot. Very ironic!
OK I'm just going to spell it out for you. You keep mentioning Minecraft like that's your defence but just forget Minecraft for God sake. So let's say little Johnny in Japan wants to play Titanfall 2 on Xbox but, o no, there's nobody to play with. Now if they had the PS crowd to play with, boom! Busy servers. Not sure how popular Titanfall is in Japan but that's just an example. Same goes for European territories where the Xbox also lags behind. This is an example of why ms wants to leech off of Sony for their users. Why would Sony want to give up that advantage? It doesn't take a rocket scientists to work that out.
Now subs, say Sony allows crossplay and further down the line most games are cross play. What's not to say that MS introduces that you need to sync a Xbox account (or create one) to play cross play from a PS to their users. How would Sony stop that? They allow every software company to let PSN users sign up to one of their accounts. How can they stop MS from letting their user making Xbox accounts. They could be powerless.
Come on Ludicrous ffs friend.
I don't use that term a lot. Maybe you have me confused with someone else?
I mention Minecraft because that's the only Microsoft game in the whole cross play discussion. Rocket League developers wanting cross play doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft. Square wanting cross play doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft. Ark developers didn't discuss how their game could have cross play, that it was already working perfectly, but Sony won't allow it, they didn't do all this to benefit Microsoft. Minecraft on the other hand is something that would greatly benefit MS if it got even more users in its next evolution because that means more potential revenue for Microsoft. All of this doom and gloom, tin foil hattery you're bringing up, Titanfall 2 servers in Japan don't make it happen LOL, Minecraft does. Of course, like I already said, Microsoft has tons of people who will receive the Play Together or whatever update, the PS crowd would be icing on the cake, not something vital. What do you think is the highest Minecraft userbase? PS4? Hardly.
And L oh freaking L at "defence". That console warrior mentality on display. Am I on trial or something? Who is being defended here? I already said Microsoft wants PS users because they want to sell them stuff. Is that a ringing endorsement for the company or something? Good lord.
How would Microsoft force other developers to require an XBL account in order for their games to work crossplay? You're not making any sense, the tin foil hat must be on too tight. The only games Microsoft can do that with, is their own. aka, Minecraft. Thanks for bringing it back to Minecraft! You see, Microsoft owns Minecraft. In order for users to play online with the new update, they need an XBL account. Just like to play an Ubi game you need Uplay. To play Madden you need an Origin account. To play GTA you make a Social Club or whatever account. This is no big deal. Microsoft doesn't even include users like these in their MAU lists. But you're saying maybe one day potentially they could probably go to Activision or another company and say hey hey hey if u want destiny 3 users to play ps4 vs xbox u gotta code it in so that ps4 guys gotta have xbl! And since you said subs I assume you mean an actual subscription aka XBL gold which makes it even more ridiculous. You know what the devs would do? Laugh in Microsoft's face, and remove crossplay.
They want PS Minecraft players to be able to download the Play Together update so they can sell them DLC. That's the entirety of it. Quit trying to play chess while Microsoft is just playing checkers, friend