Tuesday, October 6th, 2015 Posted by Jim Thacker

Microsoft acquires Havok from Intel

Microsoft has acquired Havok, developer of the eponymous Havok real-time physics system, from Intel. The company is expected to integrate the technology into its Xbox One Cloud platform.

Founded in 1998 and acquired by Intel in 2007, Havok played a pivotal role in advancing in-game physics, winning a Technical & Engineering Emmy Award.

Its technology has now been used on more than 600 games – roughly on a par with Nvidia’s PhysX – including titles in the Halo, Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, Dark Souls and Elder Scrolls franchises.

The firm provides dedicated toolsets for destruction, FX, cloth and AI, along with Havok Vision Engine, its own cross-platform game engine.

Still available for PS4 and Wii U titles
Although Microsoft’s blog post doesn’t say specifically what it intends to do with Havok, it does hint that it has the Xbox One Cloud in mind.

“We will continue to innovate for the benefit of development partners [including] building the most complete cloud service, which we’ve just started to show through games like Crackdown 3.

For the minute, however, it seems to be business as usual: Microsoft has confirmed that it will continue to license Havok for the PS4 and Wii U, as well as Xbox One, Windows, Linux and mobile devices.

“We will continue to license Havok’s technology to the broad AAA games industry,” it told IGN. “This also means that we will continue to license Havok’s technology to run across … consoles including Sony and Nintendo.”

Read the announcement of the acquisition on Microsoft’s blog