David Crane, founder of Activision, has his say on the acquisition by Microsoft.
The creator of Pitfall!, David Crane, responded to a tweet asking what the founders of Activision if they had been told that their small company would one day be bought for nearly $ 70 billion: the answer seems to have been a hearty laugh.
David Crane specified in his reply that at the time of the founding of Activision and Microsoft (the second half of the 1970s), the value of both was close to zero. The difference was that “one was founded by four recognized game designers, the other by two tech enthusiasts who developed and sold BASIC.”
HAHA! @ctrl_alt_rees has the best perspective on the purchase. Activision and Microsoft were both founded in the last half of the 1970s, one by 4 proven game designers; the other by two techies developing and selling BASIC. Both companies’ value was basically zero. https://t.co/J62fjKdgEi
– David Crane (@PitfallCreator) January 19, 2022
In the replies to the tweet, the game designer continues with a short story and a retrospective: “Our last project with Atari was the operating system for the Atari 400/800 computers […]. Given the growth expectation in video games it was also possible to imagine that Activision would be acquired for more than a billion in the future. but if you had told us that Microsoft wren could shell out 68 billion we would have questioned your sanity. “
Crane’s retrospective shows how far the respective companies have come. Activision in particular, after the merger with Blizzard (and King) has entered the net among the most important publishers in the industry and has reorganized. Who knows what he thinks of all the scandals in which the current CEO is involved …
Source: Twitter
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