Love him or hate him. If it wasnt for Kotick and his investor buddies buying failing Mediagenic (who owned Activision IPs at the time) and turned it around as Activision, the company might had disappeared.
en.wikipedia.org
Purchase by Bobby Kotick (1991–1997)[edit]
Davis' management of Mediagenic failed to produce a profitable company; in 1991, Mediagenic reported a loss of $26.8 million on only $28.8 million of revenue and had over $60 million in debt.
[11][34] Cyan severed their contract with Activision, and turned to
Broderbund for publishing, including what would become one of the most significant computer games of the 1990s,
Myst.
[34]
Bobby Kotick had become interested in the value of the video game industry following the crash, and he and three other investors worked to buy
Commodore International in an effort to gain access to the
Amiga line of personal computers. After failing to complete purchase, the group bought a company that licensed
Nintendo characters, and through Nintendo was directed to the failing Mediagenic.
[35] Kotick was drawn to buy out Mediagenic not for its current offerings but for the Activision name, given its past successes with
Pitfall!, with hopes to restore Activision to its former glory.
[36] Crane said that Kotick has recognized the Activision brand name could be valued around $50 million and rather than start a new company and spend that amount to obtain the same reputation, he saw the opportunity to buy the failing Mediagenic at a bargain price and gain Activision's reputation with minimal cost.
[10] Kotick and additional investors bought Mediagenic for approximately $500,000 in 1991. This group of investors included real estate businessman
Steve Wynn and
Philips Electronics.
[37][35]
Kotick became CEO of Mediagenic on its purchase and made several immediate changes: He let go of all but 8 of the companies' 150 employees, performed a full restructuring of the company, developed a bankruptcy restructuring plan, and reincorporated the company in Los Angeles, California.
[19] In the bankruptcy plan, Kotick recognized that Mediagenic still had valuable assets, which included the Infocom library as well as its authoring tools to make games, Activision's distribution network, and licenses to develop on Nintendo and Sega home consoles.
[34] Kotick offset some debt by giving stock in the company to its distributors as to keep them vested in the company's success.
[34] Kotick also had the company reissue several of its past console and Infocom titles as compilations for personal computers. Kotick had also recognized the value of the
Zork property from Infocom, and had the company develop a sequel,
Return to Zork. Combined, these steps allowed Mediagenic to fulfill on the bankruptcy plan, and by the end of 1992, Kotick renamed Mediagenic to the original Activision name.
[34] The new Activision went public in October 1993, raising about $40 million,
[19] and was listed on NASDAQ under its new ticker symbol
ATVI.
[37]
By 1995, Kotick's approach had met one promise he made to investors: that he would give them four years of 50% growth in revenues while remaining break-even. Reaching this goal, Kotick then set Activision on his second promise to investors, to develop high-demand games and make the company profitable by 1997.
[34]
Activision published the first-person perspective
MechWarrior in 1989, based on
FASA's pen-and-paper game
BattleTech. A sequel,
MechWarrior 2, was released in 1995 after two years of delays and internal struggles, prompting FASA not to renew their licensing deal with Activision. To counter, Activision released several more games bearing the
MechWarrior 2 name, which did not violate their licensing agreement. These included
NetMech,
MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy, and
MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries. The entire
MechWarrior 2 game series accounted for more than US$70 million in sales.
Activision procured the license to another pen-and-paper-based
war game,
Heavy Gear, in 1997.
The video game version was well received by critics, with an 81.46% average rating on
GameRankings and being considered the best game of the genre at the time by
GameSpot. The
Mechwarrior 2 engine was also used in other Activision games, including 1997's
Interstate '76 and 1998's
Battlezone.