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Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016. The company was founded as Activision, Inc. on October 1, 1979, in Sunnyvale, California, by former Atari, Inc., Atari game developers upset at their treatment by Atari in order to develop their own games for the popular Atari 2600 home video game console. Activision was the first independent, third-party, console video game developer. The video game crash of 1983, in part created by too many new companies trying to follow in Activision's footsteps without the experience of Activision's founders, hurt Activision's position in console games and forced the company to diversify into games for home computers, including the acquisition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Activision Blizzard
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. Activision Blizzard currently includes three operating units: Activision, Blizzard Entertainment and King (company), King. Founded in July 2008 through the merger of Activision, Inc. and Vivendi Games, the company owns and operates additional subsidiary studios, as part of Activision, including Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games. Among major intellectual properties produced by Activision Blizzard are ''Call of Duty'', ''Crash Bandicoot'', ''Guitar Hero'', ''Skylanders'', ''Spyro'', ''Tony Hawk's'', ''Diablo (series), Diablo'', ''Hearthstone'', ''Heroes of the Storm'', ''Overwatch'', ''StarCraft'', ''World of Warcraft'', and ''Candy Crush Saga''. Under Blizzard Entertainment, it invested in esports initiatives around several of its games, most notably ''Overwatch'' and ''Call of Duty''. Activision Blizzard's titles have broken a number of release records. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016. The company was founded as Activision, Inc. on October 1, 1979, in Sunnyvale, California, by former Atari, Inc., Atari game developers upset at their treatment by Atari in order to develop their own games for the popular Atari 2600 home video game console. Activision was the first independent, third-party, console video game developer. The video game crash of 1983, in part created by too many new companies trying to follow in Activision's footsteps without the experience of Activision's founders, hurt Activision's position in console games and forced the company to diversify into games for home computers, including the acquisition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acquisition Of Activision Blizzard By Microsoft
On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. The acquisition was completed on October 13, 2023, with its total cost amounting to $75.4 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft brought Activision Blizzard under its Microsoft Gaming business unit as a sibling division to Xbox Game Studios and ZeniMax Media. With it, Microsoft gained ownership of several franchises under Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, and King, including ''Call of Duty'', ''Crash Bandicoot'', ''Spyro'', ''Warcraft'', ''StarCraft'', '' Diablo'', ''Overwatch'', and '' Candy Crush''. As of 2023, the acquisition is the largest video game acquisition by transaction value in history. Following shareholder approval of the acquisition, the merger was reviewed by several national anti-trust bodies, with early approvals granted by the European Commission and China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), among others. The United State ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guitar Hero
''Guitar Hero'' is a series of rhythm games first released in 2005, in which players use a guitar-shaped game controller to simulate playing primarily lead guitar, lead, bass guitar, bass, and rhythm guitar across numerous songs. Players match notes that scroll on-screen to colored fret buttons on the controller, strumming the controller in time to the music in order to score points, and keep the virtual audience excited. The games attempt to mimic many features of playing a real guitar, including the use of fast-fingering hammer-ons and pull-offs and the use of the whammy bar to alter the pitch of notes. Most games support single player modes, typically a Career mode to play through all the songs in the game, as well as competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes. With the introduction of ''Guitar Hero World Tour'' in 2008, the game includes support for a four-player band including vocals and drums. The series initially used mostly cover versions of songs created by WaveGroup ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft Gaming
Microsoft Gaming is an American multinational video game and digital entertainment division of Microsoft based in Redmond, Washington, established in 2022. Its five development and publishing labels consist of: Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks (publisher of ZeniMax Media), Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, and King (company), King (the latter three are publishers of Activision Blizzard). It produces the Xbox video game consoles and services, in addition to overseeing production and sales, and is led by CEO Phil Spencer (business executive), Phil Spencer, who has overseen Xbox since 2014. Prior to 2022, Microsoft had several different video game-related product lines, including Xbox hardware, Xbox operations, and game development studios. Microsoft Gaming was created with the announcement of Microsoft's plans to Acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, acquire Activision Blizzard to unify all of Microsoft's gaming groups within a single division. With the completi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bobby Kotick
Robert A. Kotick (born 1963) is an American businessman who served as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Activision Blizzard and its predecessor, Activision, from 1991 to 2023. He became the CEO of Activision through a hostile takeover during the prior year. Kotick engineered a merger between Activision and Vivendi Games during the late 2000s, which led to the creation of Activision Blizzard in 2008 and him being named the company's inaugural CEO. He has also served on several boards, including the Coca-Cola Company from 2012 to 2022 and Yahoo from 2003 to 2008. Following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, Kotick retired from the company on December 29, 2023. Early life and education Robert A. Kotick was born in 1963 in the United States and grew up in New York. His interest in business began at an early age. In junior high school, Kotick had his own business cards, and in high school, he ran a business renting out Manhattan clubs on off nights. He studie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Call Of Duty
''Call of Duty'' is a first-person shooter military video game series and media franchise published by Activision, starting in 2003. The games were first developed by Infinity Ward, then by Treyarch and Sledgehammer Games. Several spin-off and handheld games were made by other developers. The most recent, '' Call of Duty: Black Ops 6'', was released on October 25, 2024. The series originally focused on a World War II setting, with Infinity Ward developing '' Call of Duty'' (2003) and '' Call of Duty 2'' (2005) and Treyarch developing '' Call of Duty 3'' (2006). Infinity Ward's '' Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare'' (2007) introduced a modern setting and proved to be the breakthrough title for the series, creating the ''Modern Warfare'' sub-series; a ''Modern Warfare'' remastered version released in 2016. Two other entries, '' Modern Warfare 2'' (2009) and '' Modern Warfare 3'' (2011), were made. The sub-series received a reboot with '' Modern Warfare'' in 2019, '' Modern Wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Irvine, California, and a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. Originally founded in 1991, the company is best known for producing the highly influential massively multiplayer online role-playing game ''World of Warcraft'' (2004) as well as the multi million-selling video game franchises ''Diablo (series), Diablo,'' ''StarCraft'', and ''Overwatch''. (until 2009: 20M) The company also operates Battle.net, an Online game, online gaming service. Founded as Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce the company began development of their own software in 1993, with games like ''Rock n' Roll Racing'' and ''The Lost Vikings'', and changed its name to Chaos Studios, Inc. the same year, then to Blizzard Entertainment after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates in 1994; that y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Crane (programmer)
David Crane (born 1954) is an American video game designer and programmer. Crane grew up fascinated by technology and went to DeVry Institute of Technology. Following college, he went to Silicon Valley and got his first job at National Semiconductor. Through his friend Alan Miller he learned about potential video game design work at Atari, Inc. and began work there in 1977. After Crane and other programmers felt they were not being paid fairly at Atari, he left the company in 1979. Crane and Miller formed Activision, the first company to independently publish games for the Atari 2600. The company grew to be massively successful, with Crane's game ''Pitfall!'' (1982) being one the biggest sellers for the company. Crane continued to work for Activision making several games for the Atari 2600 and later the Commodore 64. After Activision hired Bruce Davis as the new CEO, Crane left Activison and later joined Garry Kitchen at Absolute Entertainment. At Absolute, Crane began workin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infocom
Infocom, Inc., was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''. Infocom was founded on June 22, 1979, by staff and students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and lasted as an independent company until 1986, when it was bought by Activision. Activision shut down the Infocom division in 1989, although they released some titles in the 1990s under the Infocom ''Zork'' brand. Activision abandoned the Infocom trademark in 2002. Overview Infocom games are interactive fiction, text adventures where users direct the action by entering short strings of words to give commands when prompted. Generally the program will respond by describing the results of the action, often the contents of a room if the player has moved within the virtual world. The user reads this information, decides what to do, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video Game Crash Of 1983
The video game crash of 1983 (known in Japan as the Atari shock) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985 in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which shovelware, were of poor quality. Waning interest in console games in favor of personal computers also played a role. Home video game revenue peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985 (a drop of almost 97%). The crash abruptly ended what is retrospectively considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. To a lesser extent, the arcade video game market also weakened as the golden age of arcade video games came to an end. Lasting about two years, the crash shook a then-booming video game industry and led to the bankruptcy of several companies producing home computers and video game consoles. Analysts of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The early 1980s and home computers, rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and the company has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, video gaming and other fields. Microsoft is the List of the largest software companies, largest software maker, one of the Trillion-dollar company, most valuable public U.S. companies, and one of the List of most valuable brands, most valuable brands globally. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. During the 41 years from 1980 to 2021 Microsoft released 9 versions of MS-DOS with a median frequen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
