Activision Acquires Treyarch

Treyarch, located in Santa Monica, CA, was founded in 1996 and has 140 employees spread across five development teams, plus a cross-platform technology team. Under the terms of the agreement, Treyarch becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision. The deal cost Activision $20 million in stock, and Treyarch's management team and key employees signed long-term employment contracts with Activision. Treyarch is currently developing several titles for Activision, including Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x, Spider-Man The Movie, Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder 2, Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer and Minority Report. Additionally, Treyarch has worked a number of other titles for other publishers, including Triple Play Baseball for EA, Nagano Olympic Hockey 98 for Midway, Draconus: Cult of the Wyrm for Crave, and Max Steel: Covert Missions for Mattel. Activision said the acquisition will bolster the company's internal product development capabilities for the next-generation console systems, and strengthen its position in the action and action-sports genres.