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Microsoft buys Havok from Intel, GAFfers tear skin off while screaming about endtimes

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2015/10/02/havok-to-join-microsoft/

Today, we are proud to announce that Microsoft has acquired Havok, the leading provider of 3D physics, from Intel.

As we welcome Havok to the Microsoft family, we will continue to work with developers to create great gaming experiences, and continue to license Havok’s development tools to partners. We believe that Havok is a fantastic addition to Microsoft’s existing tools and platform components for developers, including DirectX 12, Visual Studio and Microsoft Azure.

Havok is an amazing technology supplier in the games industry and the leading real-time physics creator. We saw an opportunity to acquire Havok to deliver great experiences for our fans. Throughout the company’s history, they’ve partnered with Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and many others to create more than 600 games including Halo, Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, Destiny, Dark Souls and The Elder Scrolls.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Havok continues our tradition of empowering developers by providing them with the tools to unleash their creativity to the world. We will continue to innovate for the benefit of development partners. Part of this innovation will include building the most complete cloud service, which we’ve just started to show through games like “Crackdown 3.”

Havok shares Microsoft’s vision for empowering people to create worlds and experiences that have never been seen before, and we look forward to sharing more of this vision in the near future.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/10/02/microsoft-buys-havok-from-intel
“We will continue to license Havok’s technology to the broad AAA games industry," a representative told IGN. "This also means that we will continue to license Havok’s technology to run across various game consoles including Sony and Nintendo.”
For those wondering who uses Havok:

havoklcxxd.png


Havok congratulates the following AAA projects powered by Havok technology that are among the titles nominated by the Best of E3 2015 awards:

• Star Wars Battlefront – Electronic Arts
• Dark Souls III – BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment
• Fallout 4 – Bethesda Softworks
• Halo 5: Guardians – Microsoft Studios
• Horizon: Zero Dawn – Sony Computer Entertainment
• Just Cause 3 – Square Enix
• Need for Speed – Electronic Arts
• No Man’s Sky – Hello Games
• The Division – Ubisoft
• The Last Guardian – Sony Computer Entertainment
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege – Ubisoft
• Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End – Sony Computer Entertainment

http://www.havok.com/havok-congratu...ted-4-a-thiefs-end-star-wars-battlefront-and/

And here's what Havok's products are:
havokproductsisyz3.png


HAVOK PHYSICS™ - Example Game: The Last of Us

Havok Physics offers the fastest, most robust collision detection and physical simulation technology available, which is why it has become the gold standard within the games industry and has been used by leading game developers in over 400 launched titles and many more in development.

HAVOK DESTRUCTION™ - Example Game: The Last of Us

Havok Destruction is the cross-platform tool for simulation of rigid body destruction. Destruction gives the game artist total control over the simulation, drastically reducing the production time and cost of creating large numbers of believable destructible game objects. Havok Destruction can create a completely new gameplay experience by giving additional believability to structural mechanics, graphical effects, and game level design.

HAVOK FX™ - Example Game: Rainbow Six: Siege

Havok FX is a flexible effects solution for high performance particle physics and debris simulation systems.

HAVOK CLOTH™ - Example Game: Pro Evolution Soccer 2015

Havok Cloth is a platform-optimized runtime and toolset that dramatically increases the believability of game characters and environments. It allows character designers to go beyond simplistic, tight-fitting or hand-animated clothing, and to add believable, physically-based motion to garments like skirts, capes, shirts, trousers, and coats as well as other deformable items like hair, bellies, tails, flags, banners, curtains, and foliage. Havok Cloth is easily customizable and fits into today’s workflow without burdening artists, animators or programmers.

HAVOK AI™ - Example Game: Halo: Spartan Strike

Havok AI provides developers with an optimized cross-platform SDK to perform navigation mesh generation, adaptive pathfinding and path following for highly dynamic and destructible game environments. Havok AI is a navigation system designed for dynamic environment with physics and animation in mind. In addition to the core set of services such as ultra-fast navigation mesh generation, Havok AI provides a wide set of tools to support a wider range of game genres. Havok AI includes features such as navigation volumes, wall climbing support, streaming support, traversal analysis, dynamic cutting and many useful gameplay oriented features.

HAVOK ANIMATION STUDIO™ - Example Game: The Last of Us

Havok Animation Studio is a system for authoring complex hi-fidelity character animation. Havok Animation Studio includes an intuitive composition tool for artists and designers, and a run-time SDK for game programmers. Also included is the Havok Animation SDK and toolset, that provides a wide range of optimized runtime animation features such state-of-the-art compression of animation data, pose retargeting, inverse kinematics, and out-of-the-box integration with Havok Physics Together, the composition tool and SDK provide “what you see is what you get” results, accelerating development of cutting edge character performances for leading game titles.

HAVOK VISION ENGINE® - Example Game: SD Gundam Next Evolution

The Havok Vision Game Engine provides a powerful tool suite and versatile multi-platform runtime technology ideally suited for all types of games. Providing a extensible tool chain and well-designed, modular C++ API, the technology includes a variety of features to help you break through technical barriers, opening up a range of possibilities for game development.

HAVOK SCRIPT™ - Example Game: Call of Duty: Ghosts

Havok Script is a Lua compatible Virtual Machine designed for console game development. Havok Script is significantly faster than standard Lua and through a combination of internal optimizations and use of the Havok Script profiler, customers typically achieve a 2x speed improvement. Havok Script ships with Havok Script Studio, an integrated environment for Microsoft Visual Studio® and on-target profiler.

HAVOK PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

Havok offers a wide range of onsite professional services for those times when an issue becomes critical, a deadline is approaching quickly, or you simply want to ensure that your Havok integration is optimal.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
If Microsoft are in a buying mood to get stuff from Intel then maybe the acquisition of a AMD isn't ungrounded.

They did just partner up with nVidia for their cloud GPU offerings though...

Perhaps any AMD acquisition would be more to do with mobile/cpu benefits though.
 

Andodalf

Banned
I highly doubt they'll deny sony havok, it makes more sense to make the money licensing it. Sony would just make their own solution, Ms doesn't want that.
 
Can I just ask, what are the implications of this acquisition for the future? Particularly regarding gaming? Will not much change?
 

jmaine_ph

Member
I highly doubt they'll deny sony havok, it makes more sense to make the money licensing it. Sony would just make their own solution, Ms doesn't want that.
Microsoft is a business first. They would never deny potential business partners/money.
 

Finaj

Member
Damn. First Minecraft, now Havok and possibly even AMD in the future. They're grabbing some big things.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
This is actually a pretty big deal, especially when you account for how shitty it's only competition, PhysX, tends to run on ATI hardware (aka the PS4).

Unless Microsoft plans to continue licensing it out to everyone, which seems unlikely.
 
This is a bit surprising. Are there any other big physics middleware programs in such common use? Often it seems when one of these big technology companies gets acquired by a major publisher its popularity dips, for instance when EA bought Criterion + Renderware.
 
I highly doubt they'll deny sony havok, it makes more sense to make the money licensing it. Sony would just make their own solution, Ms doesn't want that.

This looks like Microsoft as a company decision, not Xbox division so i think they will let Havok to be licensed like old way.
 

_woLf

Member
I hope Microsoft maintains an open mind about letting everyone continue using Havok as they've done in the past.
 

ClearData

Member
Hm. So licensing would continue as normal or is this going to be made exclusive to Microsoft platforms? Would it be bad for Nintendo and Sony if the latter were the case?
 

5taquitos

Member
Unless Microsoft plans to continue licensing it out to everyone, which seems unlikely.

I don't see why they wouldn't continue to license it out, it just makes them more money. Havok isn't the only physics engine in town either, so if they stop licensing to others new solutions will just become more popular. I don't see this changing much except who pockets the money at the end of the day.
 

Dabanton

Member
Interesting acquisition. They'd be creaming money off most games released.

Why do I feel this is the first of some big acquisitions for MS isn't their event next week...
 

gaming_noob

Member
Fix the dead body physics. They shouldn't be light as a feather. It's odd that when you walk over dead bodies they just drag around.
 

mclem

Member
Probably not much, Microsoft license lots of software out to developers, even those who make competing products.

While I don't think they'll deny others the opportunity to use it, we might well see some of the larger companies look into their own solution if they feel that's more beneficial than paying a fee to MS. EA made Origin in part because they wanted more freedom and profit than they got from Steam, it's concievable that another company may feel something similar.
 

jediyoshi

Member
Unless Microsoft plans to continue licensing it out to everyone, which seems unlikely.

I don't know, they explicitly call out Nintendo and Sony as past Havok partners.

I would have been less likely in the past to believe Microsoft would have partnered with Oculus the way they have recently than to think they'd shut out licensing options.
 
Probably change as much as Minecraft being released on multiple consoles.....

What about Minecraft 2 though? Will that follow the same fate? I mean Minecraft was already released on PS3/4/Xbox 360/One/PC/iOS by the time MS acquired Minecraft and Mojang, so it's not like they had much choice to keep it exclusive lol.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
What does this mean ? Future ps4 games won't have havok?
I doubt much will change. The money from licenses is way higher than gains from blocking out competitors. Sony first party studios already use a fair amount of MS software.
 
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