video games interactive entertainment founded october 1 1979 ; 37 years ago 1979 10 01 headquarters santa monica california united states number of locations 38 studios and offices area served worldwide key people eric hirshberg ceo 1 products list of activision video games total assets us 14.75 billion 2014 us 14.012 billion 2013 us 14.2 billion 2012 number of employees 4000 parent activision blizzard 2008 present subsidiaries beachhead studios beenox demonware freestylegames fun labs high moon studios infinity ward radical entertainment raven software sierra entertainment sledgehammer games toys for bob treyarch vicarious visions website activision.com footnotes references 2 3 activision publishing inc. is an american video game publisher . it was founded on october 1 1979 4 and was the world s first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles . its first products were cartridges for the atari 2600 video console system published from july 1980 for the us market and from august 1981 for the international market uk . 5 activision is now one of the largest third party video game publishers in the world and was also the top publisher for 2007 in the united states . 6 its former ceo is robert kotick who was the chief executive officer of activision inc. since february 1991 until activision and vivendi games merged on july 9 2008 to create the newly formed company known as activision blizzard . 7 8 on july 25 2013 activision blizzard announced the purchase of 429 million shares from owner vivendi valuing us 2.34 billion becoming an independent company . 9 contents 1 history 1.1 new activision 1.2 merger with vivendi 1.3 post merger developments 2 acquisitions and partnerships 3 studios 3.1 current 3.2 defunct 3.3 sold 4 notable games published 4.1 1980s 4.2 1990s 4.3 2000s 4.4 2010s 5 see also 6 notes 7 references 8 external links history edit activision s headquarters in santa monica california united states . before activision third party developers did not exist . 10 software for video game consoles were published exclusively by makers of the systems for which the games were designed . 11 for example atari was the only publisher of games for the atari 2600 . this was particularly galling to the developers as they received neither financial rewards nor credit for games that sold well . 12 atari programmers david crane larry kaplan alan miller and bob whitehead met with atari ceo ray kassar in may 1979 to demand that the company treat developers as record labels treated musicians with royalties and their names on game boxes . kaplan who called the others the best designers for the 2600 in the world recalled that kassar called the four men towel designers and that anyone can do a cartridge . crane miller and whitehead left atari and founded activision in october 1979 13 with former music industry executive jim levy and venture capitalist richard muchmore ; kaplan joined soon . david crane has said the name activision was based on jim levy s idea to combine active and television . the original name proposed for the company was vsync inc. 14 unlike atari the company credited and promoted game creators along with the games themselves . the steps taken for this included devoting a page to the developer in their instruction manuals 15 16 17 and challenging players to send in a high score usually as a photograph but letters were acceptable in order to receive an embroidered patch . 18 19 20 these approaches helped the newly formed company attract experienced talent . in recognition of this step kaplan levy miller and whitehead received the game developers choice first penguin award in 2003 . the departure of the four programmers whose titles made up more than half of atari s cartridge sales at the time 14 caused legal action between the two companies not settled until 1982 . as the market for game consoles started to decline activision branched out producing game titles for home computers and acquiring smaller publishers . in 1982 activision released pitfall on the atari 2600 . designed and developed by david crane it was a huge success . many clones of the game were introduced including stand up arcade games . on june 13 1986 activision purchased struggling text adventure pioneer infocom . jim levy was a big fan of infocom s titles and wanted the company to remain solvent . about six months after the infowedding bruce davis took over as ceo of activision . davis was against the merger from the start and was heavy handed in its management . eventually in 1989 after several years of losses activision closed down the infocom studios in cambridge massachusetts extending to only 11 of the 26 employees an offer to relocate to activision s silicon valley headquarters . five of them accepted this offer . 21 in 1988 activision began involvement in software besides video games such as business applications . as a result activision changed its corporate name to mediagenic to have a name that globally represented all its activities . under the mediagenic holding company activision continued to publish video games for various platforms notably the nintendo entertainment system the sega master system the atari 7800 atari st commodore 64 and amiga . new activision edit following a multi million judgment on damages in a patent infringement suit wherein infringement had been determined many years prior during the levy era a financially weakened mediagenic was taken over by an investor group led by robert kotick . after taking over the company the new management filed for a chapter 11 reorganization . in the reorganization the company merged mediagenic with the disc company . mediagenic continued to develop games for pcs and video game consoles and resumed making strategic acquisitions . after emerging from bankruptcy mediagenic officially changed its entity name back to activision in december 1992 and became a delaware corporation it was previously a california corporation . at that point activision moved its headquarters from silicon valley originally in mountain view and later in santa clara to santa monica in southern california and from then on concentrated on video gaming . in 1991 activision packaged 20 of infocom s past games into a cd rom collection called the lost treasures of infocom without the feelies infocom was famous for . the success of this compilation led to the 1992 release of 11 more infocom titles in the lost treasures of infocom ii . activision published the first person perspective mechwarrior in 1989 based on fasa s pen and pencil game battletech . a sequel mechwarrior 2 was released in 1995 after two years of delays and internal struggles prompting fasa not to renew their licensing deal with activision . to counter activision released several more games bearing the mechwarrior 2 name which did not violate their licensing agreement . these included netmech mechwarrior 2 ghost bears legacy and mechwarrior 2 mercenaries . the entire mechwarrior 2 game series accounted for more than us 70 million in sales . 22 activision procured the license to another pen and paper based war game heavy gear in 1997 . the video game version was well received by critics with an 81.46 % average rating on gamerankings and being considered the best game of the genre at the time by gamespot . the mechwarrior 2 engine was also used in other activision games including 1997 s interstate 76 and finally 1998 s battlezone . 22 merger with vivendi edit in december 2007 it was announced that activision would merge with vivendi games which owned fellow games developer and publisher blizzard and the merger would close in july 2008 . the new company was called activision blizzard and was headed by activision s former ceo robert kotick . vivendi was the biggest shareholder in the new group . 23 the new company was estimated to be worth us 18.9 billion ahead of electronic arts which was valued at us 14.1 billion . 24 post merger developments edit sledgehammer games was founded on november 17 2009 by glen schofield and michael condrey 25 who left electronic arts subsidiary visceral games . 26 27 28 the sledgehammer games micro site went live on december 8 2009 with information on the studio development team location and current job openings . speculation on the studio s next game has been offered by industry sites kotaku and gamasutra . 29 the studio s first game was originally planned to be a first person shooter in the call of duty series with rumors of mmo aspects as revealed on their website 30 on june 19 2010 . however after the resignation of many infinity ward employees sledgehammer games was brought in to help with call of duty modern warfare 3 . 31 on february 9 2011 activision announced that it was ending its once profitable guitar hero franchise in the process doing a layoff of approximately 500 people . at the same time it announced that it was discontinuing development of true crime hong kong and that it was refocusing its efforts into a new online service named call of duty elite for its ip call of duty . at the same meeting these announcements were made activision reported net losses of 233 million for fourth quarter 2010 . 32 activision has recently mid 2011 restarted its in house development team releasing generator rex agent of providence in october 2011 for playstation 3 nintendo 3ds nintendo ds wii and xbox 360 . 33 the game was roundly ignored by critics with no review scores available on metacritic as of february 2012 . 34 acquisitions and partnerships edit year acquisition 1997 raven software made an exclusive publishing deal with activision and was subsequentally acquired by them . this partnership resulted in hexen ii heretic ii soldier of fortune its sequel and quake 4 . that same year activision acquired centresoft ltd. an independent distributor in the united kingdom and nbg distribution a german distributor . 1998 pandemic studios was founded with an equity investment by activision . pandemic s first two games battlezone ii combat commander and dark reign 2 were both sequels to activision games . that same year activision also inked deals with marvel entertainment head game publishing disney interactive lucasarts entertainment and cd contact data . 1999 activision acquired neversoft best recognized for their line of tony hawk skateboarding games . that same year activision acquired expert software maker of home design 3d . 2000 activision made an equity investment in gray matter interactive to develop the follow up to id software s wolfenstein 3d . 2001 activision acquired rights to columbia pictures feature film spider man . that same year activision also acquired treyarch . 2002 activision made an equity investment in infinity ward a newly formed studio comprising 22 of the individuals who developed medal of honor allied assault . that same year activision acquired z axis games the studio behind dave mirra freestyle bmx and luxoflux corporation . 2003 activision and dreamworks skg inked a multi year multi property publishing agreement . that same year activision also formed a partnership with valve and acquired both infinity ward developers of the call of duty franchise and software developer shaba games llc . activision and sega made a deal to publish the us releases of pc versions of some titles especially sonic adventure dx director s cut . activision along with several other game software publishers was investigated by the u.s. securities and exchange commission for its accounting practices namely the use of the return reserve to allegedly smooth quarterly results . 2004 the company marked its 25th anniversary and stated that it had posted record earnings and the twelfth consecutive year of revenue growth . 2005 activision acquired shaderworks acquired game developers vicarious visions toys for bob and beenox . 2006 activision secured the video game license to make games based on the world of james bond from