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== Main subsidiaries == === Activision === '''Activision Publishing, Inc.''' is an American video game publisher founded on October 1, 1979, by former Atari employees and was the world's first independent distributor and developer of video games for consoles. Its first products were Atari 2600 cartridges published in July 1980 in the U.S. and August 1981 internationally. Activision barely survived the video game crash of 1983 by selling cartridges at $5 instead of $40. By 1986, all the company's founders had left Activision. Larry Kaplan joined Amiga, Alan Miller and Jim Whitehead founded Accolade, and David Crane founded Absolute Entertainment. Former employees Greg Fischbach, Jim Scoroposki, and Robert Holmes founded Acclaim Entertainment. In 1988, Activision began developing software besides video games and changed its corporate name to Mediagenic. The company's four divisions were Activision, Infocom (interactive fiction games), Gamestar (for sports video games), and Ten Point O (for business applications). Infocom closed in 1989, and only five of its employees stayed aboard. In 1983, University of Michigan students Bobby Kotick and Howard Marks founded a software company called Arktronics, which developed software for the Apple II. During his sophomore year, Kotick met and pitched Steve Wynn to invest in Arktronics. Wynn later invested $300,000 in the company. Steve Jobs met with Kotick and Marks in Ann Arbor and advised them to drop out of college to focus on the software business. In 1987, Kotick tried to acquire Commodore International. He planned to remove the keyboard and disk drive from the Amiga 500 and turn it into a video game system. He was unsuccessful in persuading Commodore's Chairman Irving Gould to sell control of the company. From June to December 1990, Kotick served as the CEO of Leisure Concepts, which was renamed 4Kids Entertainment in 1995. In 1990, Bobby Kotick and Brian Kelly bought a 25% stake in Activision, then known as Mediagenic. They changed the name back to Activision, performed a full restructuring of the company, and refocused the company on video games. Kotick became CEO of Activision in February 1991, a position that he holds to this day, while Kelly is still chairman. === Blizzard Entertainment === '''Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.''' is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. The company was founded in February 1991, under the name '''Silicon & Synapse, Inc.''' by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce, and Allen Adham. The company originally concentrated primarily on the creation of game ports for other studios before beginning the development of their software in 1993 with the development of games like ''Rock n' Roll Racing'' and ''The Lost Vikings''. In 1994 the company became '''Chaos Studios, Inc.''', then '''Blizzard Entertainment''' after being acquired by Davidson & Associates in 1994. Davidson was acquired by CUC International in 1996. After a few other sales, including Cendant and Havas, Vivendi merged its video game division with Activision in 2008.
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