The difference with the analogy you're making is that the significance/value of my marriage is not dependent on other marriages. My Xbox continuing to get support does however depend on M$oft valuing their hardware. Opening up their exclusives seems like they're communicating that they don't care about hardware sales (therefore the hardware itself) as much as game/software sales.
So the reason why I'm concerned if they decide to go this route is that they won't maintain the hardware I own. That's probably not 100% accurate and I "technically" knew the risk when I bought it, but still not a great feeling.
Overall though I'm anti exclusives, so longterm I would hope it's a good thing.
The only reason at all to own a console at this point in time is the exclusives and which console your friends have, which is influenced by exclusives.
It's also a cheaper/easier point of entry, though I think we're rapidly heading to a future where all gaming is done on something that's just a PC, whether that's Windows, something that's good at hiding that it's just Windows, SteamOS, or something else.
But it doesn't run Alan Wake 2 at 4K. The Steam Deck is great value, but a console gets way better bang for your buck when output to a television, and at around the same price. Gaming PCs need to close that gap.
Ah, welcome time traveller. Can you take me back to 2008 with you? It was so much nicer there.
Seriously, every multiplayer game I've played the last few years has cross-platform play, both them and Sony have been making PC ports for ages and the reason I own a Series X is that it's quietly the best set-top media player out there, price-to-performance, and a cheap, convenient platform to play games on a TV.
I mean, if this is a prelude to them no longer making hardware I'd be bummed out, but not for those reasons.
They don't want to see "their" brand get tarnished. If the same games run in multiple platforms, people can see direct comparisons of a product, and get an idea of the true power of different market offerings, no excuses. These fanbois love excuses