is an video console system, and it is now one of the largest, third party
Video Game Publisher s in the world, second only to
Electronic Arts .
Prior to the formation of Activision,
Video Game s were published exclusively by the makers of the systems the games were designed for. For example,
Atari was the only publisher of games for the
Atari 2600 . This was particularly galling to the developers of the games, as they received no financial rewards for games that did well, and didn't even receive credit in the manuals. After watching a number of games turn into multi-million-dollar best sellers, a number of programmers decided they had had enough and left.
Activision was the first third-party game publisher for the 2600. The company was founded by former music industry executive
Jim Levy and former Atari
Programmers David Crane ,
Larry Kaplan ,
Alan Miller and
Bob Whitehead . Atari did not credit its programmers when it released software titles, which is commonly cited as a reason the developers left. Levy took the approach of promoting game creators along with the games themselves.
The departure of the four programmers, whose titles made up more than half of Atari's cartridge sales at the time, caused legal action between the two companies which was not ultimately settled until 1982. As the market for game consoles started to decline, Activision branched out, producing game titles for home computers as well, and acquiring smaller publishers.
In 1982, Activision released ''
Pitfall! '', which is considered by many to be the first
Platform Game as well as the best selling title on the 2600. Although the team's technical prowess had already been proven, it was ''Pitfall!'' that turned them into a huge success. This not only resulted in a legion of clones, including stand-up
Arcade Game s, but can be said to have launched the entire platform genre which became a major part of video games through the
1980s .
In 1985, Activision merged with struggling
Text Adventure pioneer
Infocom . Jim Levy was a big fan of Infocom's titles and wanted Infocom to remain solvent. However, 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 management of them. He also forced
Marketing changes on Infocom which caused sales of their games to plummet. 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 headquarters in
Silicon Valley ; five did.
In 1988 Activision started to get involved in other types of
Software besides video games, such as business applications. As a result, Activision changed its corporate name to in order to have a name that would globally represent all its fields of activities.(Mediagenic is often mistaken to be a company that purchased Activision but in reality it was only Activision with a different name). Despite this change, Mediagenic continued to largely use the Activision brand on its video games of the various platforms it was publishing for, notably the
Nintendo Entertainment System , the
Sega Master System , the
Atari 7800 ,
Commodore 64 and
Amiga . The decision of the company to get involved in various fields at the expense of video gaming proved to be a move so bad that in 1992 Mediagenic filed for
Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. The first Activision was "dead".
The failure of Mediagenic resulted in a reorganization and merger with
The Disc Company with Mediagenic again being the acquirer. After emerging from bankruptcy, Mediagenic officially changed its entity name back to Activision in the state of
Delaware on December 1992. At that point Activision moved its headquarters from
Silicon Valley to
Southern California . While emerging from bankruptcy, it continued to develop games for
PCs and
Video Game Console s and resumed making strategic acquisitions. Activision chose from then on to only concentrate itself in video gaming and nothing else.
In 1991 Activision packaged 20 of Infocom's past games into a
CD-ROM collection called ''
The Lost Treasures Of Infocom '' ''sans'' most of 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 ''.
In 2003, 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.
In 2004, the company marked its 25th anniversary, and stated that it had posted record
Earnings and the twelfth consecutive year of
Revenue growth.
On
February 2 ,
2006 , in response to recent accusations that Activision's title ''
GUN '' promotes
Racism and
Genocide , the company stated ''"Activision does not condone or advocate any of the atrocities that occurred in the American West during the 1800s. GUN was designed to reflect the harshness of life on the American frontier at that time." ... "It was not Activision’s intention to offend any race or ethnic group with GUN, and we apologize to any who might have been offended by the game’s depiction of historical events which have been conveyed not only through video games but through films, television programming, books and other media."''
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(Activision's current list of developers can be seen here: http://www.activision.com/en_US/studios/studios.html)
