You must erase one video game company from existence? Including all of their games, IPs and consoles.
To be honest, as a PC gamer, the only one I would definitely not erase is SEGA, as they had a hand assisting Creative Assembly in producing some of the early Total War games, which I certainly wouldn't want to lose. To be fair, Xbox is part of Microsoft who are also quite obviously involved in the PC gaming scene, so sparing it would be a way of 'playing safe' and further contributing to ensuring PC games and IPs are safe. So it rounds down to axing either Nintendo or PlayStation... I did once play the comparatively old GW game Fire Warrior on a PS2 once and can't deny it was fun (even if I did keep on getting shot in the back as a Salamanders Space Marine )... but I have also played on a Wii a few times too and found that fun too. The final decision will require some further thought.
I haven't played a console game in a very long time, and I don't play a lot of PC games. I do watch a lot of pop culture news videos. It sounds like Xbox is on it's way out anyway.
So, let's try to break it down a little... Nintendo: Mario, Pokemon, Zelda X-Box: Fortnite, Minecraft, CoD Playstation: Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil Sega: Mortal Kombat, Sonic, Street Fighter Going exclusively by personal preferences, i'd drop Sega. BUT I am not counting their presence in different projects (as pointed by @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl)... if said erase will also impact "related" products, my vote could be different.
I'm certain Final Fantasy started on Nintendo. I don't know about Tomb Raider or Resident Evil. But I believe it's a reasonable hypothesis that if Playstation didn't buy Final Fantasy, someone else would have or would have kept with Nintendo. I believe Minecraft was initially the creation of one man. It probably would have found another home without X-Box. X-Box being late to the party but backed by Microsoft, I don't think they created much inhouse, they mostly bought other people's stuff. I'm not sure their absence would change much in the grand scheme of things though my friend's wife really really likes Fortnite, so I think she'd be sad if it wasn't there. According to the Internet, video game console sales are down across the board in 2025 going into the new year, but that doesn't mean one of these company's is circling the drain. I think X-Box is taking the biggest hit recently and Sega has had some bad years before now.
I used to be a Nintendo guy [NES, SNES, N64], then briefly moved to PlayStation [PS2], then to Xbox [Xbox 360] and now finally back to PlayStation [PS4, PS5]. So the decision is easy for me. Sega is out.
Sega certainly has a "What have you have done for me lately?" problem. I am big Nintendo fan, I grew up on it in the 90s and nostalgia carried me through the oughts During that era, even though I think Nintendo usually won their bouts with Sega, the competition kept them both sharp. If Sega wasn't around, Nintendo wouldn't have reached the heights it did. Capitalistic competition and all that.
A fair point. That was the big console war back in the day and their back-and-forth elevated the product.
They did. There was a big hubabaloo about it back in the day when Nintendo fans got upset about FF7 switching to PS1, but a ruddy good job they did. I don't think Final Fantasy would have succeeded in that generation if they hadn't. 6 was a masterpiece that was always going to be difficult to match; staying on outdated hardware (no judging, I do like the N64 and the games made for it were good, but it was objectively outdated hardware) would have shot themselves in the foot. Squaresoft made the right choice jumping ship... Alas, Square-Enix would then give us the misery that was X-2, an entire trilogy based on XIII, and really dragged their heels with the VII remake, to the point that even if it wasn't the case, it feels like an emergency "oh crap, after XIII (trilogy) and XV, we need to do something that can't fail us!" And I'm saying that as someone who mostly likes Remake and Rebirth, some choices notwithstanding. And there is the number one reason why monopolies are bad, and why I will always be in favour of even companies I don't care for to still be allowed to try and have a redemption arc. Competition breeds innovation, while the lack results in stagnation. I was never big on Nintendo as a kid, my parents got me a Sega Megadrive (or Genesis for those across the pond), and then a PS1 instead of an N64. And I wouldn't change that if I could. I don't care for XBox... but that mostly stems from how these days, there are so few console exclusives that the latest generation of consoles doesn't actually mean anything. So that's more modern XBox, not XBox OG/360. And also applies to the PS5, but I actually got that specifically for FF7 Remake (and Rebirth)... when then a year later it was revealed it was only a timed exclusive... AAAARGH! I'm not kidding... I would have not bothered with the PS5 and just waited to get them on Steam if they'd just told us that they were going to be timed exclusive and not exclusive exclusive. So... I suppose that my vote goes to Microsoft XBox simply because they are the youngest console brand... the history of the other three means that it comes down to triage. Sorry XBox, but my childhood videogame history beats Halo.