Activision: A Decade of Denting Wallets

Flipping through the decade-long Activision highlight reel assembled by IndustryGamers, we couldn't help but clutch our wallets a bit tighter after every page. For the past decade, we've been regularly stuffing wads of cash into the mega publisher's piggy bank, which has swelled to nearly $3 billion, according to IndustryGamers. In return, we've actually enjoyed countless hours and precious moments of quality gaming. Fair trade?

While our mental image of Activision is something akin to an Akira Project–like, colossal monstrosity -- an unrestrained beast, repeatedly re-gurg-i-ta-ting its acquisitions all over us -- the company is very much in control and has secured a variety of deft business deals that continue to produce games we simply can't resist (aside from the ones we do). True, there's only so many toy instruments one can squeeze into a modest living room, but we'll make some room for a plastic turntable on the coffee table, and the Real© Call of Duty is out again this year, and ... you get it. We're already loosening our grips and opening up the wallets again.

But make no mistake. We do so while gritting our teeth. What was Kotick's recent joke about hiking up the price for Modern Warfare 2 in the UK and the exorbitant costs of Activision's peripheral-packed games in all markets? Oh, that's right: "You know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further," the CEO quipped. Nobody's laughing but you, Rob.