In a filing Thursday, Microsoft said it’s buying Activision Blizzard to improve its mobile-entertainment offerings, and noted that it’s offered a deal to keep Call of Duty titles on rival Sony’s consoles. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking to prevent the US$68.7-billion takeover. (The Logic, CNBC)

Talking point: Microsoft has tried to maintain a conciliatory tone in public about the agency’s antitrust-busting attempt. It dispatched president Brad Smith to meet with FTC chair Lina Khan this month and has touted its agreements with competing console makers. Activision’s Thursday filing was spikier, labeling the FTC’s block attempt an “ideologically fuelled effort to ignore settled law and what decades of experience tells us is good for competition.” It disputes the regulator’s claim that Microsoft will withhold CoD from other console makers, claiming it has no incentive to do so and that no one franchise—however many billions of hours players devote to perfecting their marksmanship—can make or break a gaming system. Hearings in the FTC administrative court begin in August.