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Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

FTC: Wait what?! We're supposed to be concerned about the rabble first?

Europe considers both direct harm to consumers and harm to competitors because without significant competition, the big players inevitably slide into exploiting customers and their vendors.

That explains why Europe approved the merger.

The current status quo is on a path to being harmful to both.

I love Nintendo but they compete more with Apple and Google than they do with Sony and Microsoft.

If Microsoft exits game consoles next generation Sony won’t have any real competition and that will be very bad for consumers.

Microsoft needs their own heavy hitting exclusives and they need them sooner than they can home grow them. This acquisition is one of the only ways they can do that.

An anti-competitive Microsoft conglomerate to compete with PS# is hardly going to better for consumers than a Nintendo-Sony duopoly.

I’d rather we don’t allow bad M&As, even for good reasons.

There really isn't a Nintendo-Sony duopoly. They don't really compete with each other. It's a handheld game system with the ability to dock and work with a TV. The hardware and its gaming capabilities are very different. There is almost no overlap in the games available to each console. Nintendo stopped competing on high performance hardware several generations ago.

It competes like a Honda Civic competes with a Chevrolet Corvette.

Side comment, but I think you may underestimate the Civic (Type R). Of course the C7 is still on top, but still..

Both in 2017:

7:13.9 - Chevrolet Corvette C7 Z06 Christian Gebhardt.

7:43.8 - Civic Type R, Honda didn't name the driver.

Having said that the Nintendo Switch competes against the Series X in my home for time. It has some seriously good titles that my son loves to play.

I forgot to say these were Nordschleife lap times. It's about a serious test of both driver and car as you get.

Out of curiosity, which year Type R did that lap? I'm familliar with the EK9 generation from the 90s, is this lap in one of the newer models from the last years?

That time is a 2017. The 2023 actually went faster, but the lap length changed in 2019 so its 7:44.9 time isn’t directly comparable.

https://www.motortrend.com/news/2023-honda-civic-type-r-nurb...

And the 2023 was a stripped down version only available in Europe as well, that + the track change is why I looked up the 2017 numbers to compare properly.

Ha, I missed that. “Type R S” sold in left hand drive European markets to let them call it a production car lap time, as if anyone actually wants a Civic with no air conditioning.

This quoted lap time would be from the 2017 FK8; it was seriously impressive, especially in my books.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_Type_R

I eventually ended up with an electric car instead (Tesla LR3), but spent hours looking at this - and the Subaru WRX.

That’s why I love this place! Always learning new things when you least expect it.

Thank you!

I don't really buy this. There's only so many much time individuals can/will commit to playing video games and spend on accessories. There'll be an overlap of those who can afford the time/money to use both a Switch and a PS5. And with consoles, it's often game sales that matter more than hardware as Nintendo is the only company that makes some money off of its hardware.

Quality of games doesn't matter so much. If someone is spending hours playing Tears of the Kingdom, that's time not spent on playing games on another console.

Even with your analogy there will be some people who can afford 2 cars and drive them for different occasions but others only dedicate to just one. And even then a person can only drive one car at a time.

> They don't really compete with each other.

That's not true. Both sides have made handhelds as well as full gaming consoles.

Just because Nintendo's current focus is the handheld switch and Sony dropped their handheld for now doesn't mean things won't change.

PS Sharp? Is that a new language?

harms to the market are harms to the consumer, consumer harm as the court standard is how we got this consolidated state

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