Absolutely, I agree with you 100% (I work for a company that...

Absolutely, I agree with you 100% (I work for a company that does exactly this, I'm a solutions architect for the company).

I concur that EM1 having an ISV status does afford some perks in regards to SLA and better rates for services but it does bring with it spend requirements too. Especially if they're going down the route of game streaming on IaaS, their bill will skyrocket (not an opinion, this is factual and can be calculated using the Microsoft Azure Calculator)

But I still have the view that calling it a partnership is disingenuous - Microsoft did not have to vet EM1 and their solution, EM1 simply reached out to Microsoft and agreed to ISV commercial terms for cloud hosting.