Activision Publishing was founded in October 1, 1979 by Atari programmers David Crane, Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead. It was the world's first independent developer and distributor for video game consoles. Their first titles were games for Atari 2600 and was the first third-party developer for it. In 1988, their name was changed to "Mediagenic" when it began involvement on video game systems. However, in December 1992 after emerging from bankruptcy, it was officially renamed back to its current name. In December 2007, it was announced that Activision was to be merged with Vivendi Games, the owner of Blizzard Entertainment, and the merge was completed on July 2008. Today, the company is currently a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard and is known for publishing and distributing the Tony Hawk, Spider-Man, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Skylanders and Vilgante 8 franchises.
