@fu I know that anti-trust law is complex, but one doesn't need much more than a pulse to see that merging one of the biggest gaming software houses with one of the biggest gaming hardware and services houses is going to harm competition ... and that means it will harm gamers. I didn't follow the trial much, but the #FTC should have shown up with thousands of pages of exhibits, hundreds of experts testifying, and a timeline of past #Microsoft ( #MSFT ) anti-competitive acts to show a propensity.

Not that this should have been the first such merger they tried to block. The federal government doesn't really seem to get that "a free market" can only happen when neither individual buyers nor individual sellers have enough market power to force their chosen prices and terms upon the other party. Thus, in a situation where there are really only three gaming console hardware vendors worldwide and the software vendors have to contract with the hardware vendors for each specific game, there can never be a free market and governmental authorities have to whack the vendors with a stick periodically to make them play fairly with one another and with the gaming customers who buy their products and services. Or, you know, break those giant corporations up into multiple smaller organizations and prevent them from coordinating their pricing, promotion, production, etc in ways that hurt the gaming customers. I know that #USDOJ missed its chance around 1999-2001, when it had won its case against Microsoft and then came a change of administration and it punted on having the court impose an effective remedy.

As a business major, I feel like no one else was paying attention in their classes when this stuff was being discussed. It's covered in the two basic economics classes and also in business economics, business management, business law, and in legal environment of business, and those are just the ones I remember.

CC: @simsa03