Activision Acquires Vicarious Visions

Activision has taken a step to grow: they've acquired Vicarious Visions...

Activision today announced that they have acquired developer Vicarious Visions, the company behind Doom III for the XBox, GBA games like Tony Hawk's Underground and the recently released Spider-Man 2 for the Nintendo DS. The two companies stated to aim for next-gen development, including the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

Vicarious Visions has developed five games that have sold more than one million-units each and is currently co-developing the highly anticipated DOOM III for the Xbox with id Software, as well as Spider-Man 2, which will be a launch title for the upcoming PSP platform. In addition, they have developed such popular titles for the Game Boy Advance as Shrek 2, Shrek 2: Beg for Mercy, Shark Tale and Tony Hawk's Underground 2.

Kathy Vrabeck, President of Activision Publishing, said: "Vicarious Visions' talented development team and proprietary technology combined with our internal systems and capabilities will play a key role in Activision's continued leadership on the next-generation platforms. Vicarious Visions has a track record of success and we are very excited to partner with them."

Under the terms of the agreement, Vicarious Visions' 100-person studio, headquartered in Troy, NY, with offices in Mountain View, CA, has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision. As part of the transaction, Vicarious Visions' management team and key employees have signed long-term employment contracts with Activision.

"We have shared a strong relationship with Activision over the past five years on platforms ranging from Game Boy Color to most recently the Nintendo DS, Xbox and Sony PSP," said Karthik Bala, CEO of Vicarious Visions. "Joining the Activision family seemed like the logical next step and we look forward to continuing to build great games and a great company together."

Guha Bala, President of Vicarious Visions adds, "We've always admired Activision's ability to expand and evolve with the ever changing video game industry. Their franchises include some of our favorites, and their strong marketing and development capability makes them a great partner for our studio."

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Comments

• 

  Good news. Probably one of the best handheld developers out there.

  Andrew, 30-11--0001 at 00:00
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  I don't like Activision. I respected them until they made that poor rehash of Shrek 2. Beg For Mercy was a poor game that was too similar to the first Shrek 2 title. They were just trying to suck more money off the movie. Kind of like EA and LOTR, now that I think about it...

  ryuuslayer, 30-11--0001 at 00:00