Sorry, typical me. I didn't read the thread properly. Won't happen again As for outdated plugins just bump api and string.
At a server side perspective, it wouldn't matter if authentication used Xbox Live or Mojang account authentication. They both would achieve the exact same goal. I would not want PC style authentication primarily due to the fact that in many ways, the current authentication mechanism is superior. On PC, both the client and the server must make real-time requests to a session server to ensure that a player has been authenticated. This requires the session server to be running all the time in order to allow players to join a server. If it goes down then people aren't able to authenticate and get kicked out of the server. Even the slightest downtime will lead to people getting kicked off servers when attempting to join them. The current PE style authentication only requires an initial OK from authentication servers and only the server needs to run a few checks to ensure that the player is authenticated. The server never needs to talk to a session server to verify anything, which cuts down on the server connection time as an added benefit. (And yeah, PHP based crypto libraries exist, but I can almost guarantee the performance impact will be ever so evident )
Some servers go straight to you and say Please register with /register <password> Although Lifeboat has thought through their authentication and made it more simple and easy to explain, plus if they don't get the password correct, it sets them as a "Guest1728" and they can still play games
