Activision Acquires Vicarious Visions

Officials from Activision have announced that the company has acquired New York state based developer Vicarious Visions. The developer, specialized in handheld development but also increasingly moving into console game creation, has developed a number of titles for Activision, including the Xbox conversion of id's Doom 3 and the Nintendo DS version of Spider-Man 2. Under the terms of the agreement the 100-person developer, which also has offices in Mountain View, California will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision. The developer’s management team and other key employees have also signed long term employment contracts. It's likely that current Vicarious Visions contracts with other publishers, such as its development for Electronic Arts of Batman Begins for PSP and DS, will be completed before the development turns to wholly Activision-owned projects. As well as its wealth of handheld experience, this purchase also gives Activision control of the developer’s proprietary middleware technology Alchemy, which will now be added to the publisher’s existing next-generation tools and libraries. For further background on the company, Gamasutra recently conducted an interview with Vicarious Visions CEO Karthik Bala.