 Look, to say I've been following the FTC versus Microsoft case over the last few days would be an understatement. I've been watching lots of recaps on it, looking at the documentation, seeing all the official quotes, and yeah, it's sort of entertainment for me at this point because in my opinion, the FTC kind of looks like a joke and like they don't understand the market. Who knew? But I wasn't gonna really talk about this much outside of maybe live streams until Nintendo was brought into the conversation because of course the FTC is attempting to do something the CMA attempted to do and basically say Nintendo doesn't matter. I bet that's effectively what they're saying. Now, this isn't a surprise because the FTC in December of last year when making some statements about how they were opposed to this acquisition noted that they wanted to make a new product category for home consoles. Again, this was in December of 2022 that they wanted to make this product category and the product category is called the High Performance Console Market of which they claim only to exist PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S and X. Now, this is clearly an attempt to just minimize the impact of Nintendo. What they essentially are saying is that Nintendo systems do not play the same games and because they don't play the same games, they don't count. The Switch came out in 2017. It's more in line with eighth generation platforms. There's only two ninth generation platforms and the Switch doesn't matter in today's market. Now, that is basically what they were trying to argue back then which sounded utterly ridiculous because the whole point of creating that product category was to present the fact that this Activision Blizzard acquisition wouldn't have any impact on Nintendo. So that was the general gist of it. Why are they creating this product category? Because they're trying to exclude Nintendo from mattering in the acquisition so they could focus on this being PlayStation versus Xbox. Also, it would make arguments that Xbox presents about being in third place. Not true because, well, Nintendo doesn't count. It's quite interesting that they wanted to make this argument because there's so many reasons that Nintendo obviously counts. Even if you want to talk game subscriptions. Nintendo has 36 to 40 million NSO subscribers. So now Nintendo is a big player in that. It generates over a billion dollars in revenue for them every single year. Nintendo's also had incredible system and software sales and been leading pretty much since it came out in those categories. So to just be like, oh, Nintendo doesn't matter is really weird. And then on top of that, Nintendo also still gets some of the same games that PlayStation 5 and Xbox series get. Examples, just to throw this out there. Mortal Kombat 1. Hello, like that's not even a game that's come out yet. And we already know it's coming to Nintendo Switch. But remember Switch needs to be in a different category. It can't be counted as a main competitor in the console space. Now again, this was back in December of 22, but this came up yesterday when they put Phil Spencer on the stand. And they came at Phil in a very, very interesting way when it comes to this. They basically made a statement that Nintendo does not count as a competitor and is irrelevant to this case. And well, Phil Spencer wasn't having it. He said it is incorrect for the FTC to say Nintendo isn't a competitor when it still occupies the same industry and even hosts the same and similar third-party content. He went on to have a very interesting quote where he said, the reason you're trying to exclude them it doesn't matter because Nintendo does this market in a different way. They created a handheld portable device that you could take games and play anywhere with you. The form factor alone means, of course, it cannot compete on a technical level, but generations have never been defined by technical levels. And I find that to be an interesting remark because actually if you go throughout console history, the weakest system is typically sold the best. That that's actually true historically. It's only like one generation where the stronger platform actually led. Otherwise, historically, the weakest platform in every generation is the one that leads. And what we're talking about, you can have the debate and we've had it before whether Switch belongs in Gen 8, whether it belongs in Gen 9, whether it sort of blurs the lines because technically Nintendo already had a Gen 8 system in the Wii U. Reality is that when it just comes from the business perspective of the entirety of the console space, you clearly cannot ignore Nintendo or pretend that Nintendo has no impact on that space or pretend that this acquisition wouldn't impact Nintendo at all. There's already a 10-year deal in place that the acquisition goes through. And you guys remember the CMA saying, oh, Switch can't even run Call of Duty. That thing means nothing. Wasn't considering that Nintendo is probably gonna be releasing a new platform soon. So, man, it's just kind of frustrating watching governing bodies like the FTC and the CMA in the past who really do not understand this industry, try to argue the relevance of Nintendo. Nintendo is probably the least relevant of the three systems when it comes to this acquisition. In one regard, Nintendo doesn't actually care. Nintendo isn't opposed to the acquisition because they think the acquisition will probably help them because now they'll have Call of Duty on Switch and they'll get to take their 30% cut of those sales. So, Nintendo looks at this as a win. Now, the thing is, there's other games, there's other games from Activision Blizzard that appear on Switch. Hello, Crash Bandicoot. Hello, Overwatch. Like, Activision Blizzard has been supporting Switch in some ways, just not always. So, like this acquisition could impact that. Maybe there's no more future Crash games on there. Hey, look, Diablo III was on Switch, but Diablo IV isn't. There are aspects to this that while Nintendo might gain Call of Duty, they could lose other games. This acquisition doesn't just impact PlayStation and Xbox. I think that's the problem here is when the FTC is trying to not count Nintendo because Nintendo is doing it different and yet still getting some of the same games, some of the third party games, there's Activision Blizzard games on Nintendo. It's utterly ridiculous to just dismiss the platform saying it's not gonna be impacted by this so it doesn't matter when clearly it would be impacted by this because it has Activision Blizzard games on its platform and actually would be gaining Call of Duty. It's just frustrating watching governing bodies dance around Nintendo's relevancy and I don't know why they do that other than just straight up not understanding this industry. The FTC did such a poor job yesterday. The judge cut them off three times. Three separate times. The judge told the FTC, that's enough, let's move on because the FTC couldn't get off of certain points that they were trying to get Phil Spencer caught in a gotcha moment and it just, it didn't work. They tried to get him to slip up on Call of Duty by saying anything possibly incriminating that Call of Duty wouldn't be on PlayStation and despite PlayStation not signing the 10-year deal, Phil Spencer still said it would be on PlayStation and future PlayStation's and that it would be parody even without a deal in place and then they tried to get Phil Spencer to commit to putting Call of Duty on PlayStation for free. I don't even know exactly what that means but basically I guess that there wouldn't need to be a contract with Sony at all. I guess that that would sort of be the argument so then Microsoft would make less money by putting the game on PlayStation and the judge wasn't having that line of question. The judge absolutely just cut them off through that question in the garbage because why would that even be, that's not even realistic. It's not realistic to say you're gonna get something for free that isn't even free for them. That's just, yeah. The whole line of questioning from the FTC just looks ridiculous at this point. If they win this injunction, they have to have something come up in the next two days well not the next two days, but the next two hearings, there's two more hearing dates and then Friday that is like a smoking gun, right? They need something that from a fact perspective is undeniable to, at this point I think for this judge to go in their favor because the judge seems pretty annoyed with the FTC's arguments that are a bunch of basically admitting that they don't understand the industry and trying to exclude Nintendo back in December and then bringing it up in this case and having that Phil Spencer on the stand under oath, explain how the video game industry works was quite interesting. And I hope it's a wake up call to the government to actually understand how the video game industry works, how like trying to segment systems based on how much power they have doesn't really fully encapsulate what the console business really is because even with the power disparities they still get some of the same games that PlayStation and Sony do from third party companies and yes, Nintendo also throws money around for exclusive content just like PlayStation, just like Microsoft to the same companies like Square Enix as an example. Hey, they got Final Fantasy XVI exclusive. Yeah, and Nintendo got, you know, Autopad Traveler is a timed exclusive at one point and Live Alive and Triangle Strategy, you know, they throw money at platinum games and got Astral Chain and Damon X Machina. So like, look, this is just, it's really, really frustrating, I guess for me as an onlooker and a Nintendo fan to just see the government so dismissive of Nintendo's importance in the current gaming market. It's like they're trying to act like Nintendo doesn't exist and it's super weird. It's super, super weird. Yes, Nintendo operates differently but still within the same market. It is the same market. We can talk about, oh, the handheld market's not the same as the home console. I understand the arguments there but it's all one market. And what is that market? Dedicated video game devices. That's the market. They're all part of it. They all have their roles. They all take things from each other, inspired from each other. Can't tell me the Wiimote didn't lead to PlayStation Move, which led to the PlayStation 2 VR headset. Can't tell me that Nintendo didn't inspire that or inspire other people to use joysticks and D-Bads. You can't tell that Nintendo wasn't inspired by other online services to offer their own online subscription service. Like this is, you know, hey, Microsoft offering all these retro games. Nintendo responds and does a service to offer retro games. You can't argue that Nintendo is irrelevant in this market. It's just, you just can't. I don't know. You guys let me know what you think about this down in the comments below. There's a lot of information out there coming out from this court case. Heck, I'm curious on what your guys' thoughts are for anyone else who happens to be paying attention to these proceedings. I'll catch you guys in that next video.