they actually already did that, they loved to cancel melee tournaments.

Given how bad N4G runs these days, with slow loads and broken features, I can't do the sanity check I had hoped to do (looking at Switch channel, sorting newest/hottest/etc and seeing if a pattern emerged). Sans that, my gut says it's likely truth, potentially seeming more pronounced with confirmation or recency bias. I'm guessing you were thinking about it, so you'll see it stick out more readily than other things, and the Switch 2 has awkward launch baggage (1st $80 game, $100 JoyCons & Pro Controllers, charging for a tech demo, etc), and kinda unexciting while they handle the content transition to a new console while no longer having just one console to have to worry about.

My gut belief is this: the Internet is just getting sad. Positive content, everywhere, for everything, gets like 25% of the traffic or engagement of negative stuff. It just feels like people either like to bitch, or like to watch others tear things apart. Our collective mentality has become perverted, seeking outrage above all else.

I'm not saying there's not a bias. At one point, waaaaaay back when (PS3 days) there was a fairly heavy anti-PS bias on N4G. Then PS took a bigger foothold, and it slanted more towards anti-MS bias.

Nintendo has largely swirled all over the place. given they've historically catered to a more "casual" audience. (Casual, in this definition, meaning those who don't consider gaming one of their hobbies, or go on sites to read news or comment.) I think that meant they stayed in the background of conversation on places like N4G during the Wii U's failure, and only started gaining more relevance as more people here got a Switch for Nintendo exclusives, or a portable secondary device.

So I do think on places like N4G, there's a less strong "pro Nintendo" crowd, compared to the other two big platforms. Kinda like PC - I play on everything, PC my "main" platform, but it simply isn't brought up as much unless there are garbage ports and the like. Things that need discussion and coverage, but it feels it skews more negative than positive here.

But I still think it's more focused on the general, sad internet trend of negative being a more lucrative topic to create content for, so there's more of it to go around. And more likely to get approved. Sorry this was ultimately kind of rambly, and I'm not trying to discredit your observation as I can't prove it one way or the other. Just kinda...tossing things out there...and being sad about the state of the internet lol.

to be very fair, this post took almost a full day to get approved.

so it wasnt all too fast