Company Overview
Highlights
Remember the Atari 2600? Activision created the popular Pitfall!, Kaboom!, and River Raid titles for the early gaming system.
Activision owns exclusive rights to develop and publish video games based on Marvel's comic book and film franchises: Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Iron Man. It has a similar deal with DreamWorks Animation and can create games based on existing properties, such as Shrek and Madagascar.
Founded in 1979, Activision was the first independent developer of entertainment software. The company's first, and probably biggest, hit was the arcade game, Asteroids, which dominated the video-game market during the early and mid 1980s. Activision's success is based on game-development agreements with companies such as Disney, Marvel, and LucasArts, and a franchise-based development system that allows for an endless release of sequels. The company's popular titles range from simulations to the ultraviolent, and include Doom 3, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and the Tony Hawk skateboarding game series. In 1999, Activision acquired Expert Software, Elsinor Multimedia, and Neversoft Entertainment, expanding its line of entertainment titles. It has steadily continued to acquire smaller video game companies in the years that have followed. In 2003, DreamWorks teamed up with Activision, granting Activision exclusive rights to publish games based on several of DreamWorks' computer-animated films; the deal was further extended in 2005. In late 2007, the company agreed to sell a 52 percent stake in the company to Vivendi in a deal valued at $9.8 billion. Vivendi plans to combine Activision with Vivendi Games.