This could have been worded better, admittedly, but it is technically a true statement. The reason why is because English is weird and you can also read this sentence as console wars have been going on for 30 years and the latest battle is between Microsoft and Sony. Not that Sony and Microsoft have been duking it out for 30 years.

That’s stretching it quite a bit, but let’s look at that interpretation and see where we go. The console wars began between the Famicom/NES and the Sega Mark III/Sega Master System, which were released in…1983 and 1985. That’s 36 and 34 years ago, respectively. (And arguably, they actually started with the release of the SG-1000, which was in 1983.) So yeah, that’s still not 30 years, so the statement is still wrong. And as I said, that’s based on an interpretation of the sentence that isn’t exactly what people would get from reading it naturally. You have to really closely analyze it to even come up with that as a possible interpretation.

But it has no official name. Project Scarlet is just the code name used internally at Microsoft and minimal details are known. Meanwhile Sony just recently announced that the next Playstation would officially be called "Playstation 5" and released additional details about it. Microsoft has not followed suit, yet. So again, technically true.

It’s still kinda misleading. Strictly speaking, Microsoft has made an official announcement of its next console, even if it’s lacking in details. And BTW, was there ever any doubt that Sony’s next console was going to be called the PS5?

They are on the list but the 360 is NOT in the top 5. The top 5 are, in order: Playstation 2, Playstation 4, Playstation, Wii, Playstation 3. The SIXTH best selling console is the Xbox 360. Categorically true statement.

I think I understand the confusion here. The other guy was going by North American sales, where the 360 did better than the PS3, while you and Tim (presumably) were going by global sales.

Perhaps misleading but not a false statement, so it doesn’t count. Though I would say it’s not entirely irrelevant as the Switch is selling faster than the PS4 so it could potentially outpace the PS4 at some point.

You’re not wrong, but the unfairness of the statement is exacerbated by what he said next:

Much of this is explained by Nintendo’s consoles being slightly more in a niche market compared with Sony’s and Microsoft’s. But part of the reason for that is the decidedly closed off, walled garden, anti-consumer approach Nintendo has taken with its consoles and intellectual property.

That is, Tim is saying that part of the reason for the Switch’s lower sales is because of how Nintendo walls off its consoles and takes an anti-consumer approach in its intellectual property.

Now first of all, as far as the walled garden, anti-consumer approach with consoles, Nintendo is no worse than Sony, which is pretty much exactly the same in this area, and even worse when it comes to cross-platform play. It’s true that Nintendo is worse when it comes to intellectual property, but not with consoles.

Second, that does not explain why Nintendo’s consoles are in a more niche market. That has more to do with their philosophy when it comes to console design, which tends to be more experimental than Sony or Microsoft’s approaches.

Third, it completely ignores the elephant in the room: the Switch has been out for 3 years, has not been discontinued, and no successor has even been rumored or hinted at, while the PS4 was released 6 years ago. Since he’s not using anything close to an apples-to-apples comparison, there was no reason to mention the supposed “niche-market appeal” of the Switch or Nintendo’s walled garden, anti-consumer approach to anything.

Fourth, while he mentions the Wii—which was a console from the previous generation—and the Switch, he completely ignores the Wii U. Now, it sold badly for a variety of reasons, namely the GamePad, failing to market to the hardcore gamers at all, the influx of mobile games to appeal to the nontraditional gamer market, and confusion stemming from the name and the fact the Wii controllers were still a primary way to control the game. But the fact is that it makes no sense to completely ignore it.

For the record, I don’t approve of many of Nintendo’s practices, included how it enforces its IP. However, using the fact that the Switch hasn’t sold in 3 years what the PS4 has sold in 6 years to bring that up was completely beyond the pale, and it suggests that he was just trying to push his own agenda rather than comment on actual facts. He explicitly said that Nintendo’s practices that he dislikes are causing a discrepancy that only exists because he’s not making a fair comparison.

Absolutely terrible.

Well, let’s see. We have one statement that is either completely wrong or is both misleading and inaccurate. One statement is technically true, but not completely accurate either. One statement is true. And one statement is very misleading and is being used to push a narrative that, while not necessarily wrong, is not at all supported by the statement and is irrelevant to the article, while also leaving a glaring omission. Maybe they weren’t hitting it out of the park, but I’d say it wasn’t “absolutely terrible”, either.

Also, this is hardly the worst case of Tim getting the facts wrong. In a previous article about Epic-exclusive games, he took one developer who tried to keep fans from freaking out about the switch and another who received heavy criticism and possible harassment for their decision and thought they were one and the same. This was a huge error, as it gave the impression that the calm, somewhat-pleading message from the former was still met with heavy backlash, of which there is no evidence. The backlash was actually against a dev who did not handle the announcement or the resulting backlash well at all. To this day, months later, there is still no correction to that article, despite the fact that the error is extremely obvious and prominent and makes a huge difference.