There have been a lot of games I’ve played that’re now on Xbox Game Pass for PC, it’s allowed servers that were otherwise dead to have a fair amount of players and the relatively populated servers to be even more so.
I don’t know if AGS/Amazon has a rivalry with Microsoft that’d prevent such a thing but if not, it would be a very easy avenue for New World, especially being that a lot of revenue comes from skins themselves. Also, the more populated people think a game is, the more they’re willing to invest.
If your curious what crossplay feels like between platforms try tiny tinas wonderlands or predator hunting grounds then ask yourself why would both of those games give an option to opt out of cross play. Because many times its proven to not work as intended. Lag happens or drops in network connections via compatability errors, infinite loading screens. Personally I’ve had nothing but bad experiences from crossplay.