Microsoft Acquires Havok From Intel To Keep Licensing Physics Tech

Microsoft this week announced their acquisition of Havok, a leading provider of game development technologies, from Intel for undisclosed amount. Microsoft uses Havok in its very popular Halo series of games, but many other leading game companies have also licensed Havok’s software for years- which include Activision, EA, Nintendo, Sony, Ubisoft and many more. 

The company says that it still plans to license Havok technologies to game publishers and development studios, even as it brings the entire development and maintenance of the Havok technologies under its own roof. 

Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Dublin Ireland, Havok is a computer software company that provides interactive software and services for the gaming and movie industries. Havok was founded by Hugh Reynolds and Steve Collins of the computer science department in Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. 

Havok’s technology has been used in more than 150 game titles, which include Halo 2, Half-Life 2, Fallout 3, Lost Planet 3 and many more. Havok’s technology has also been used to drive special effects in movies such as Poseidon, the Matrix, World War Z, Harry Potter and X-Men. It also provides the dynamic driving for Autodesk 3ds Max. 

In addition, Havok has also made some partnership with some of the world’s best known game publishers and development studios, including Activision, Bungie, Electronic Arts, Interactive Entertainment, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, Bethesda Softworks, Remedy and Ubisoft. The company has offices in Dublin, San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai and Germany. In 2007, the company was acquired by Intel.

Microsoft plans to integrate Havok physics into its Azure-powered Xbox One Cloud. Massive-scale, cloud-calculated physics is one of the most anticipated features of Microsoft Studios’ upcoming Crackdown 3, which is expected to hit the market in mid 2016.

Havok’s main competitor in the gaming physics market is graphics chipmaker Nvidia, which has licensed its own PhysX technology in more than 150 games. 

Image credit: Tech Times