In a press release issued earlier today, troubled games publisher Midway has revealed that they have received a $33 million bid from Warner Bros Entertainment for the majority of its U.S. assets. The move would give Warner access to the Mortal Kombat franchise and Midway's Chicago and Seattle-based development studios. However, for now the two have merely entered a "stalking horse" agreement, meaning that Midway chose the company from a pool of bidders and the $33 million offer sets the floor for future bids from other parties.
If this initial bid is approved, there will now be a court-supervised auction where other qualified buyers can make their own offers, if any. Midway does say it is expecting other offers from unnamed parties they have been in talks with that might be interested in purchasing either the entire company or parts of it. Sources tell Kotaku that these interested parties include Ubisoft and a private Chicago investor.
Warner is obviously hoping to make a big entry into the game space - it bought out RPG developer Snowblind Studios in February, TT Games in 2007 and Monolith Productions in 2006. The company also has a roughly 30 percent stake in Tomb Raider publisher Eidos.