Activision Inc was promising to make acquisitions in Europe earlier this year (CI No 3,109), but the Santa Monica, California-based games developer and publisher clearly hasn’t finished shopping in the US yet. Last week it acquired Raven Software Inc of Madison, Wisconsin. Raven will become a wholly- owned subsidiary and its shareholders will receive 1,040,000 shares of Activision common stock. Raven specializes in action and role-playing games for Intel-based personal computers, and is working with Doom author iD Software Inc on the Hexen II game, due out this autumn, using the Doom engine. Around one million copies of Hexen and the related Heretic titles have been shipped to date. Raven is also working on Megaslayer and Take No Prisoners games, also due out this autumn. The long-standing relationship between Raven and iD will continue, according to Raven’s new parent. Activision develops and publishes games for personal computers, Macintosh, Sony Playstation, Sega and Nintendo games platforms, and now has long-term exclusive control over such games as Zork, Heavy Gear, Dark Reign, Interstate ’76, Shanghai, Pitfall and Civilization. Last year, the company made profits of $7.1m on sales of $86.5m.
