There's a really good chance EA will be buying Take-Two, and people are wondering why Activision didn't snatch them up first.

"I think we've had - as we’ve said for a very long time, now - well-stated criteria for what we're interested in in an acquisition," Activision chairman and CEO Bobby Kotick explained to an audience at Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium 2008 Conference.

"We've said that we need a history of profitability, good management, the proprietary technology for a franchise, history of multimillion unit sellers. They would have to be non-dilutive and operating margin accretive," he continued to say, "And, for us, Take-Two didn’t fulfill those requirements. Maybe it does over the long-term for EA, but it doesn't for us."

Kotick didn't go into any specifics, but he suggested that Take-Two was too unstable to be a reliable investment.  Speaking for his company, he stated, "We really like businesses where if we take the risk, we get the reward.  Where you see businesses where you're taking all of the financial risk in the product-development investment or in the franchise fees, and then the reward is going to the developer or the licensor. That doesn't really make for a great margin expansion strategy, in our view."

As for EA and Take-Two's potential union, Kotick admitted that "they have a good sense of what its prospects are for the future."