Activision Publishing Inc. is a famous American video game publisher which is the world’s first third-party developers and the distributor of the video game for gaming consoles.
History
Activision Publishing Inc. was founded on October 1, 1979, thirty-eight years ago whose headquarters is located in Santa Monica, California. It was Activision, who started the third-party gaming developers culture. They started their market in the United States and then took it on the international market a year later.
Before starting the Activision, all the game developed worked for ‘Atari’ but never received any financial rewards nor the credits for their video games. So, Larry Kaplan, along with the other developers Allen Miller, David Crane and Bob Whitehead left ‘Atari’ and founded ‘Activision’. Initially, they thought of many names including, VSync Inc. and finally, the name of the company was decided, which was based on the idea of combining ‘Active’ and ‘Television’ together to form ‘Activision’.
Activision was started on the policy that the company will credit and promote the game creators along with the video games. They made sure the page was devoted to the developers in their game manuals. They also made a page where a gamer can send in their highest score in order to compete, which attracted the skilled talent in the world of gaming.
Soon, after Activision started to gain publicity, ‘Atari’ took legal action on the four-game developers and it almost took two years to settle the case. Then there was a huge recession in terms of a gaming console, so the company decided to produce games for PC which helped them to acquire smaller publishers in the gaming business.
Business & Career Growth
It was David Crane who designed a video game called ‘Pitfall!’ for the Atari 2600 platform which became a huge success among the game lovers. Soon, they released several arcade games which received a very good recognition and appreciation by the game lovers across the globe.
Activision, as a company started to grow and purchased ‘text adventure’ or the ‘Interactive Fiction’ pioneer Infocom. But after a few years, when Bruce Davis took over as a CEO of the Activision, due to heavy losses they closed down the Infocom services in the United Kingdom. So, they decided to venture into other areas, and besides videos games, they started concentrating on the software industry.
Activision then changed its name to ‘Mediagenic’ which consisted of four groups namely Activision, Infocom, Gamester, and Ten Point O. The grey clouds started gathering over the company as they suffered a multimillion loss and the company was taken over by a group led by Robert Kotick. After going through a bankruptcy, Mediagenic changed their name back to Activision and became a Delaware Corporation from California Corporation where they released numerous gaming consoles and PC games.
In order to manage Activision properly, Activision Holdings was created as a holding company. Then they merged with the ‘Vivendi Games’, which is owned by a fellow game developer and published ‘Blizzard’. A new company was formed called ‘Activision Blizzard’ where Robert Kotick became the CEO. Till now, they have merged with numerous gaming developers and created some of the best games in the business including ‘Destiny’, ‘Blur’, ‘Singularity’, etc.
Awards & Achievements
Till now Activision has produced one of the best games in the market with unbelievable storylines and mind-blowing graphics. They have nominated on numerous occasions in the world of gaming. Their biggest achievement would be winning the ‘BAFTA awards’ on numerous occasions.
Net Worth of Activision
As of October 2024, The estimated net worth of Activision is approximately $20 billion, which is far more than their rivals ‘Electronic Arts’. Their main source of income has been their earning from the gaming industry.
Activision was founded by four gaming developers, who saw a lot of ups and downs in the company’s lifetime. Today, it is one of the biggest company in the world of gaming which is far ahead of their rivals