Yeah. Though to be fair, the alternative in the controller space in that era was hot-swappable rechargeable battery packs - a ton of 3rd parties provided them for Xbox 360 controllers.

IMHO Sony nailed this pretty perfectly 30 years ago on devices like the Discman: Have a footprint which can support a number of standard batteri(es), but engineer it so it also accepts and detects a specially-designed NiMH pack. When the special batery is present, allow the battery to be charged anytime external power is provided.

Now you have the best of both worlds: Economical rechargable use for the 90% of the time that the user's in their normal routine, and easily ability to swap temporarily to universally-available alkalines in exceptional situations.

Note: When I had one of these, I just used my own NiMH AAs and jammed a folded-up piece of cardstock against the detection switch, which worked perfectly fine.

IMO just having the battery pack replaceable without tools is what matters more than using a standard one. As long as the device is even remotely popular there will be cheap replacements available.

Regarding #2 the fact that probably the majority of battery-powered non-toy devices now are designed not to ever have their battery serviced is indicative of a (in my opinion) diseased mindset of disposability. Each of the components including battery and other wear parts are only spec'd to last about 12-18 months. We're being conditioned (by one-year warranties and by the lack of repairability) to think that it's normal and expected that you discard and replace everything smaller than a car every 18-36 months, and a car every 7 years or so because "obviously" anything older than these milestones is "obsolete anyway."