After a week-long thrashing by the FTC, the Nintendo Switch has been vindicated by a federal judge

gamesradar.com:

The Nintendo Switch has been an unfortunate casualty of the FTC court case that's potentially set to decide whether the Xbox Activision deal goes ahead, but now its honor has been defended by a federal judge.

A significant part of the FTC's strategy has been to highlight Microsoft's strength in the games industry. If it can do that successfully, it would make its job - of proving that this historically large acquisition is anti-competitive - significantly easier. To do that, it's focused on the three main console providers, attempting to argue that the Nintendo Switch shouldn't be considered alongside the Xbox Series X and the PS5.

If the FTC can successfully disavow the Switch, then the console war becomes a two-horse race between Xbox and PlayStation, in which Microsoft's relative strength theoretically becomes much greater.  If it can't, then Microsoft remains in third place behind Sony and Nintendo, and its apparent position in the industry is weaker. It's not a perfect argument - Microsoft is still well behind Sony, and both Microsoft and the FTC acknowledge that Xbox has lost the console war.

Nevertheless, the attempt to diminish the strength of the Switch remains, with the FTC arguing that it's technically an 8th Generation console that has no place competing with the processing power of Sony and Microsoft's 9th Generation offerings. It's being labeled as almost irrelevant in the modern console landscape - something that pundits have already decried as flawed given the strength of both the Switch's sales and the importance of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, one of 2023's best-selling games.

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