3 min read
A viral poll recently circulated on social media and sparked a firestorm on the r/PakGamers subreddit, asking a simple question: “If you could delete one gaming company from existence, which one would it be?” The options were the industry titans: PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo.
Democracy is a beautiful thing. That is, until you realise the majority sometimes votes with their hurt feelings rather than their brains.
The results were brutal. Nintendo took a landslide 60% of the vote. Xbox trailed behind at 23%, while Steam and PlayStation sat safely in the single digits.
Which company would you delete from existence
byu/Due_Product_5150 inPakGamers
The internet has spoken. The internet wants Nintendo gone. But I am here to play devil’s advocate, literally.
Nintendo is the ‘Necessary’ Devil
Let’s address the elephant in the room. It is understandable why most people voted for Nintendo. In 2025, the Japanese giant has effectively become the “villain” of the industry.
They are ruthlessly litigious. They sue emulator developers into oblivion and strike down fan tributes. The gaming community is still sore from the legal war Nintendo waged against the Palworld developers earlier this year.
Voters looked at the poll, saw an anti-consumer legal team, and grabbed their pitchforks. They aren’t wrong to be angry.
However, if we look at this logically rather than emotionally, deleting Nintendo is a mistake.
If you delete Nintendo from the timeline, gaming loses its soul. We lose Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, and a history of unique hardware innovation. There is no legal substitute for these experiences. You cannot play Tears of the Kingdom on a PlayStation.
Nintendo might be an “evil wizard”, but they are the only ones casting that specific brand of magic.
The Case for Deleting Xbox
So, who should have taken the bullet? It should have been Xbox.
Microsoft has spent years turning Xbox from a console into a service. Every first-party Xbox game releases day-and-date on PC. If the Xbox Series X vanished tomorrow, nothing fundamental would change. Gamers would simply open the Steam app on Windows 11.
Xbox has become a subscription service attached to a plastic box. If you delete them, you just lose a piece of hardware, not the games themselves.
The Pakistani Paradox
The reaction on local forums like r/PakGamers adds a funny layer to this.
In Pakistan, Nintendo is a niche luxury. It is expensive, rare, and lacks official support. It was an easy target for local voters because, for many, Nintendo “doesn’t exist” here anyway.
Conversely, Xbox is the “Saviour of Pakistan” because of the Series S and Game Pass combo. It is the budget king. But while the world voted to delete Nintendo out of anger, and Pakistanis voted them out of indifference, the hard truth remains.
We can survive without another black box that plays Call of Duty. But a world without Mario? That is a boring world.
I say keep the Devil. Delete the redundancy.
