Earlier this week it was revealed that bankrupt publisher Midway Games may be selling off its Mortal Kombat franchise. Midway has since said (via MTV Multiplayer) that it's not necessarily a "goal" for the company to sell the IP but it "could happen."

We at GameDaily BIZ would put the odds on a sale happening. Naturally, Midway doesn't want to sell Mortal Kombat, but they didn't exactly want to be in the terrible financial position they're in either. So who would be a top candidate to pick up the venerable Mortal Kombat franchise? We believe Activision Blizzard would make the most sense. The company said today that it's looking at further acquisitions, and it has $3 billion in cash to work with. Picking up Mortal Kombat would be a good fit too, as Activision doesn't have much in the way of fighting games in its portfolio.

We ran our theory by two leading analysts to get their respective takes on the situation. Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter said it "makes sense," but he added, "I don't think ATVI would buy Mortal Kombat unless they got the developers, too. That franchise is really a product of the creative, not just the IP, and I don't know if the developers have any interest in working for ATVI."

Mike Hickey of Janco Partners believes Activision is most likely looking at Mortal Kombat as well. He told us, "We think Activision is a likely bidder for Midway's Mortal Kombat IP. Activision currently lacks a distinctive fighting game in their IP portfolio (please, no emails from Kung Fu Panda fan boys) and has been open about using their strong cash position for IP acquisition. That said, we expect the Activision team to remain a disciplined bidder, despite a ballooning cash position."

He added, "Other potential bidders for the IP could include Take-Two (how about a Rockstar developed Mortal Kombat!), Electronic Arts and Ubisoft."