By Quinton Miles

In an attempt to strengthen its development capabilities for the next-generation of games, Activision announced today the acquisition of developer Vicarious Visions. More recently known for being the company behind [i]Spider-Man 2[/i] for the Nintendo DS, Vicarious Visions has worked on numerous games that have sold one million units worldwide, and is currently co-developing [i]Doom 3[/i] for the Xbox.

“Vicarious Visions’ talented development team and proprietary technology combined with our internal systems and capabilities will play a key role in Activision’s continued leadership on the next-generation platforms, said Kathy Vrabeck, president of Activision publishing. Vicarious Visions has a track record of success and we are very excited to partner with them.”

“We have shared a strong relationship with Activision over the past five years on platforms ranging from Game Boy Color to most recently the Nintendo DS, Xbox and Sony PSP,” said Karthik Bala, CEO of Vicarious Visions. “Joining the Activision family seemed like the logical next step and we look forward to continuing to build great games and a great company together.”

As mentioned previously, Vicarious Visions is working on [i]Doom 3[/i], rumored to hit the Xbox in March.