FTC declares console war winners

gamesradar.com:

If you've been waiting for some official statement to mark the end of the last few console wars, the Federal Trade Commission has you covered, as the group has now declared the winners in the battles of Xbox 360 versus PS3 and Xbox One versus PS4.

In advance of this week's hearings on the Xbox Activision deal, lawyers representing the FTC filed their proposed 'findings of fact' - a document that essentially lays out the facts of the case as the FTC understands them. The document lays out the history of the case, including some details on the years of competition between the gaming divisions of Sony and Microsoft.

The public version of the document, which we've reviewed, is heavily redacted to protect the trade secrets of the companies involved, but it has two particular notes that are extremely funny to see in an official court record. The FTC says that "in the United States, Microsoft won Generation 7 with the Xbox 360 pitted against the PlayStation 3," but adds that "Sony won Generation 8 with the PlayStation 4."

The FTC isn't specific about what metrics it's using to talk about the 'winners' here, but it's almost certainly console sales. Publicly reported console sales numbers do indeed suggest that Xbox 360 beat PS3 in the console race in the US - though the PS3 narrowed the gap substantially in worldwide sales, and by some accounts, ended up ahead of 360 by the end of the generation. As far as PS4 and Xbox One, well… yeah, Sony won that one. There are no caveats there.

You'll note that Nintendo isn't mentioned anywhere here, and that's by design. This section of the FTC's findings of fact is headed "PlayStation and Xbox are Fierce Competitors, and Nintendo is Differentiated," arguing that the Switch's hybrid nature,