Yes, I believe it could be a similar practice. At least in the job that I do (what we like to call these days UX/UI) it is, to reduce the costs and make the GUI optimized for the most important or critical platform / device first…
By the way, in the prod team we do not have much to say about this when budget is involved. So this decision might not come from Asobo or the direct prod management (on MS side), involved in MSFS but could be from higher (Stakeholders), budget approval and other business and strategical decisions.
After all, the first logo we see when we launch MSFS is XBox. Fair enough…
But I hope the direct Prod Management of MSFS will convince the decision makers to have a branch dedicated to PC users with a more minimalistic PC experience… I think this will reinforce the objective that it is a sim for simmers…