Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded in February 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce and Allen Adham. The company originally concentrated on the creation of game ports for other studios' games before beginning development of their own software in 1993, with games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1993, the company became Chaos Studios, Inc., and then Blizzard Entertainment soon after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates early in the following year. Shortly after, Blizzard released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
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.
Sierra Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genre, including the first such game, Mystery House. It is known for its graphical adventure game series King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Gabriel Knight, Leisure Suit Larry, and Quest for Glory, and as the original publisher of Valve's Half-Life series.
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer.
Pandemic Studios, LLC was an American video game developer based in Westwood, Los Angeles. Andrew Goldman and Josh Resnick founded the studio in 1998 after leaving Activision. Pandemic Studios, alongside BioWare, was acquired in 2005 by Elevation Partners and placed under VG Holding Corp., which in 2007 was sold to Electronic Arts (EA). EA closed Pandemic Studios in 2009. Pandemic Studios is known for a variety of titles, including Full Spectrum Warrior, Star Wars: Battlefront, Dark Reign 2, Destroy All Humans!, Mercenaries, and The Saboteur.
Bizarre Creations Limited was a British video game development studio based in Liverpool, best known for their racing titles Metropolis Street Racer (Dreamcast) and the follow-up Project Gotham Racing series. The company has also developed games in other genres, including the Geometry Wars arcade series, plus the third-person shooters Fur Fighters and The Club. Bizarre Creations was acquired by publisher Activision in 2007, and subsequently completed its racer Blur in May 2010.
nStigate Games was an American video game developer based in Novato, California.
RedOctane, Inc. was an American electronic entertainment company best known for producing the Guitar Hero series, beginning in November 2005. RedOctane became a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision in 2006. In February 2010, Activision closed the RedOctane division.
Radical Entertainment Inc. is a Canadian video game developer based in Vancouver. The studio is best known for developing The Simpsons: Hit & Run (2003), Prototype (2009) and Prototype 2 (2013), as well as entries in the Crash Bandicoot franchise. Radical Entertainment was founded in September 1991 by Rory Armes. Dave Davis, and Ian Wilkinson. It was acquired by Vivendi Games in 2005 and transferred to Activision in 2008. The studio faced significant layoffs in 2010 and 2012, with the latter causing it to cease development of original games and only support other Activision studios.
Blizzard Albany is an American video game developer based in Albany, New York. The studio was acquired by Activision in January 2005. After releasing its last game as part of that company, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, Vicarious Visions became part of Activision's sister company Blizzard Entertainment in January 2021 and was merged into it in April 2022, thereby being renamed Blizzard Albany.
Ubisoft Leamington is a British video game developer and a studio of Ubisoft based in Leamington Spa. Founded in November 2002 by six industry veterans formerly of Codemasters and Rare, the studios was bought by Activision in September 2008. In January 2017, Ubisoft acquired the studio from Activision and renamed it Ubisoft Leamington. Ubisoft Leamington is working on AAA games, primarily the Tom Clancy's The Division franchise, in close cooperation with sister studio Ubisoft Reflections as both act as support to the main developer.
Guitar Hero is a series of music rhythm game video games first released in 2005, in which players use a guitar-shaped game controller to simulate playing primarily lead, bass guitar, 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 Sound, but most recent titles feature soundtracks that are fully master recordings, and in some cases, special re-recordings, of the songs. Later titles in the series feature support for downloadable content in the form of new songs.
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. Activision Blizzard currently includes five business units: Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, King, Major League Gaming, and Activision Blizzard Studios.
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is a 2008 music rhythm video game developed by Neversoft and published by Activision. It was released on the PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 consoles, with Budcat Creations solely developing the PlayStation 2 port, Vicarious Visions solely developing the Wii port, and Aspyr solely publishing the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X ports. The game was released on June 29, 2008 in North America, on July 27, 2008 in Europe, on August 6, 2008 in Australia and October 9, 2008 in Japan. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith sold as both a bundle with a specially designed guitar controller as well as a game-only package.
Blur is a 2010 vehicular combat arcade-style racing video game for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Activision in North America and Europe. The game features a racing style that incorporates real world cars and locales with arcade style handling and vehicular combat. Blur was the penultimate game developed by Bizarre Creations before they were shut down by Activision on February 18, 2011.
Finn Buster Robertson is an Australian front-end web developer. Previously a composer and music producer.
Video gaming in the United States is one of the fastest-growing entertainment industries in the country. The American video game industry is the largest video game industry in the world. According to a 2020 study released by the Entertainment Software Association, the yearly economic output of the American video game industry in 2019 was $90.3 billion, supporting over 429,000 American jobs. With an average yearly salary of about $121,000, the latter figure includes over 143,000 individuals who are directly employed by the video game business. Additionally, activities connected to the video game business generate $12.6 billion in federal, state, and local taxes each year. World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025 the American gaming industry will reach $42.3 billion while worldwide gaming industry will possibly reach US$270 billion. The United States is one of the nations with the largest influence in the video game industry, with video games representing a significant part of its economy.
Geometry Wars is a series of top-down multi-directional shooter video games developed by Bizarre Creations, and, later, Lucid Games. Originally published by Microsoft Games Studios, the first title was included as a minigame in Project Gotham Racing 2 for Xbox. An updated version was released in 2005 as a launch title for Xbox 360 and later ported to Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft Gaming is a multinational video game and digital entertainment division of Microsoft. Microsoft Gaming produces the Xbox brand of video game consoles and services, in addition to overseeing the production, game development, publishing, research and development, sales of Xbox and the division's three subsidiaries (publishers) worldwide. The three subsidiaries consist of: Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, and Activision Blizzard, each publish games under their own respective labels. CEO Phil Spencer, who has concurrently overseen the Xbox brand since 2014, is the leader of the division.
