It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios.

After a management shift, with CEO Jim Levy replaced by Bruce Davis, the company renamed itself to Mediagenic and branched out into business software applications.

Building on existing assets, the Kotick-led Activision pursued more publishing opportunities and, after recovering from its former financial troubles, started acquiring numerous studios and various types of intellectual property over the 1990s and 2000s, among these being the Call of Duty and Guitar Hero series.

[10] In early 1979, Atari's marketing department circulated a memo listing the best-selling cartridges from the previous year to help guide game ideas.

[11] Out of a development staff of thirty-five, four programmers (Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead), had produced games that had accounted for 60% of Atari's sales.

They were directed by their attorney to Jim Levy, who was at the time raising venture capital to get into the software business for early home computers.

Levy listened to their plans, agreed with its direction, and helped the four to secure about $1 million in capital from Sutter Hill Ventures.

[11] They also checked with legal counsel on their plans to develop games for the Atari VCS, and included litigation fees in their capital investment.

[16][17] Activision began working out of Crane's garage in the latter half of 1979, each programmer developing their own game that was planned for release in mid-1980: Dragster, Fishing Derby, Checkers, and Boxing.

[10] The attention afforded to Activision worried Atari, as the four's departure had already created a major dent in their development staff.

[10] By the end of 1980, Atari filed a formal lawsuit against Activision to try to stop the company, claiming the four had stolen trade secrets and violated non-disclosure agreements.

[10] The lawsuit was settled by 1982, with Activision agreeing to pay royalties to Atari but otherwise legitimizing the third-party development model.

[11][10] Danny Goodman stated in Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games in 1983, "I doubt that there is an active [Atari 2600] owner who doesn't have at least one Activision cartridge in his library".

While there was still a demand for Activision games, uneducated consumers were more drawn to the heavily discounted titles instead, reducing their income.

[11] Looking to expand further, Activision acquired, through a corporate merger, the struggling text adventure pioneer Infocom in June 1986.

This acquisition was spearheaded by Levy, who was a big fan of Infocom's titles and felt the company was in a similar position as Activision.

[11] In late 1986, Activision adopted the Electric Dreams brand, usually used for British software, for titles outside of English for the American market.

[34] Cyan severed their contract with Activision, and turned to Broderbund for publishing, including what became one of the most significant computer games of the 1990s, Myst.

[33] Bobby Kotick had become interested in the value of the video game industry following the crash, and he and three other investors worked to buy Commodore International in an effort to gain access to the Amiga line of personal computers.

[36] After failing to negotiate a purchase with Davis, Kotick and additional investors bought Mediagenic in a hostile takeover for approximately $500,000 in 1991.

[19] In the bankruptcy plan, Kotick recognized that Mediagenic still had valuable assets, which included the Infocom library as well as its authoring tools to make games, Activision's distribution network, and licenses to develop on Nintendo and Sega home consoles.

[37] By 1995, Kotick's approach had met one promise he made to investors: that he would give them four years of 50% growth in revenues while remaining break-even.

Reaching this goal, Kotick then set Activision on his second promise to investors, to develop high-demand games and make the company profitable by 1997.

A sequel, MechWarrior 2, was released in 1995 after two years of delays and internal struggles, prompting FASA not to renew their licensing deal with Activision.

To counter, Activision released several more games bearing the MechWarrior 2 name, which did not violate their licensing agreement.

Several of these came prior to 2001, in the midst of the Dot-com bubble, enabling the company to acquire studios at a lower valuation.

[38][39] Some of the key acquisitions and investments made by Activision in this period include: While Activision was highly successful with its range of developers and successful series, Kotick was concerned that they did not have a title for the growing massively multiplayer online market, which presented the opportunity for continued revenues from subscription models and microtransactions instead of the revenue from a single sale.

[53] Since then, Sledgehammer, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch share development duties for the flagship series, with support from Raven and other studios as necessary.

In February 2010, Activision Blizzard reported significant losses in revenue stemming from a slow down in Guitar Hero sales and from its more casual games.

Subsequently, Activision Publishing shuttered Red Octane, Luxoflux and Underground Development as well as laid off about 25% of the staff at Neversoft.