Bloomberg (may require registration or subscription) reports that the US Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit to prevent the EU from reaching a settlement with Microsoft over its contentious $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard. VGC offers relief from Bloomberg's inexplicably hard paywall with some details from the story:

Those close to the transaction told Bloomberg that the FTC wasn’t expected to act until the spring, and that usually in these situations it would wait until closer to a deadline to try and figure out settlement terms that would be considered globally acceptable.

However, as Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson LLP’s antitrust head Barry Nigro told Bloomberg, the FTC’s speedy lawsuit appears to be an attempt to “get out in front of the Europeans in an effort to shape the narrative”.

In its official statement following the filing of the suit in December, the FTC alleged that the deal would not only give Microsoft an upper hand in the console market, but also in other areas such as subscription gaming and cloud gaming.