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[OEM]

Yeah and Sony makes money with each Blu-Ray drive on Xbox One.

lol no

 

[Doug Heffernan]

Wow great acquisition, especially if they roll the profits from Havok licensing into the Xbox division. That could really do a lot to counteract lost revenue and keep shareholders happy.

 

[Ricky Ricardo]

Really looking for that angle huh?

 

[jaypah]

You must have missed Tim Dog's tweets.

Let's loosen up a little friends. It's Friday.

Lol he probably should have posted the chalkboard on twitter then. I was trying to figure out what it had to do with the thread

I don't venture outside of GAF/Giantbomb for my news and discussions. We already have enough platform war shit here, venturing to twitter or blogs makes my head explode.

 

[The Flash]

I don't get it

 

[bishoptl]

Next on checklist:

• Microsoft buys EA

maybe

Gonna sew up that Renderware tech!

Really looking for that angle huh?

I can see this pains you greatly

 

[Nirolak]

Okay, I have the details of every Havok product in the OP now so people can understand what they are.

So Neil Druckman is making a game that is putting money in Microsofts pockets.

They already were. Visual Studio is used across Naughty Dog: https://www.quora.com/What-IDE-does-Naughty-Dog-use

Drew Thaler, I make things fast at Naughty Dog
390 Views • Upvoted by Miguel Paraz
There's no prescription — people can use whatever they like as long as it gets the job done.

Builds are driven by makefiles and the command line, so you can edit however you like.

Visual Studio 2013 is installed everywhere since that's where Sony's PS4 debugging and profiling tools live, and a lot of people just use that. But Sublime Text is also popular, and a handful of programmers use emacs.

Drew Thaler is a real Naughty Dog employee to note: https://twitter.com/drewthaler?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

 

[ZhugeEX]

Jeeeezzzzzz.............

 

[HoodWinked]

ms owning havok is actually a good thing. physx would often lockout amd video card owners. with ms having havok they will probably push it with dx12 making havok become even more prolific maybe we see less physx lockout nonsense.

 

[Caayn]

Wow, that's a pretty big acquisition. Congrats to MS.

Wonder they are going to do with it. Implement parts of the technology behind it in DX12? Allow devs to use it for free, or at a discount, on Xbox/DX12? Etc.

 

[Suite Pee]

Luckily, Microsoft, like most other publicly-traded companies, really likes money. This will change little.

 

[GameWhisperer]

lol no

I am pretty sure they do.....it's not a lot however.

 

[ProvenDeadly]

Luckily, Microsoft, like most other publicly-traded companies, really likes money. This will change little.

Console wars are more important to Phil didn't you hear?

 

[AP90]

Cloud, halolens and royalties.

-people like to try to make a big deal over something thats pure business related.

 

[Bits N Pieces]

Gonna sew up that Renderware tech!


I can see this pains you greatly

I thought he was stating the obvious?

 

[Maxrunner]

This is what MS specializes in, buying others work and eventually throwing it to the ground from time to time.....(NOKIA).....

 

[Juanfp]

Cloud, halolens and royalties.

-people like to try to make a big deal over something thats pure business related.

Hololens halo limited edition confirmed?

 

[inner-G]

I typically hate 'realistic' physics, I'd rather have canned animations that look realistic than a dude flopping around like he's made of rubber

 

[Ricky Ricardo]

I can see this pains you greatly

Senpai noticed me!

 

[AP90]

Hololens halo limited edition confirmed?

First one to bite!! haha =P

But seriously cloud, hololens and royalties.

 

[PanicFreak]

So Neil Druckman is making a game that is putting money in Microsofts pockets.

I bet that ND even has access to Microsoft Office *gasp*

 

[GameWhisperer]

Holy crap guys, Sony doesn't own bluray. They are on the bluray association, which Microsoft is now on too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association

No one said they owned blu-ray but all don't all part of the association get small royalties from it including Sony?

 

[Tain]

I don't know that Havok is quite the juggernaut it used to be. It's obviously still huge, but there are other solutions these days. UE3 and UE4 don't even use it, if I remember right.

 

[shadowsdarknes]

Lol!

 

[RodrigoDorta]

they should buy NaturalMotion off Zynga (seriously, why did they buy it?). Makes me sad we don't see that more in games and instead get floppy ragdolls from the 90s

the jump in the physics from the end of the 6th gen to the beggining of the 7th was amazing: dead space, skate, halo 3, saints row, crackdown. Then came the NaturalMotion stuff that is amazing, i dont know why R* toned it down in GTA V, its seems like its physics dark age all over again.... at leats we got R6 Siege.

 

[AlphaDump]

Nah (speaking as a programmer myself), there's no sense in incorporating Havok into the DirectX API. DirectX provides rendering capabilities (or multimedia rather), Havok provides physics. In-house engines license things like Havok and incorporate the engine/library into their game engine. Game engines have a whole bunch of middleware and/or in-house stuff, some make their own physics engines, some prefer to license one out and incoporate. Engines use rendering APIs like DirectX or OpenGL for in the simplest explanation - graphics/multimedia. There's no sense in incorporating that into DirectX, architecturally it doesn't make sense. Physics engines/libraries are incorporated into existing engines. There's plenty of third party middleware that is licensed, Havok is just another one of them. For example, a lot of games license Scaleform from Autodesk which is commonly used in user interfaces, this middleware is incorporated into the engine. Same goes with audio middleware such as FMOD. You also get more gameplay related middleware such as PathEngine for pathfinding that some games use instead of writing their own. Basically, architecturally and from a very technical programming standpoint, it's a bad idea to incorporate a physics engine into a graphics API because it doesn't make sense and is unnecessary maintainability.

They /could/ say you can only use Havok if you use DirectX 12 as a licensing term, but actual implementation into the DirectX API makes no sense on a technical level. They could also make their own game engine like Unity or Unreal esque and stop licensing and incorporate Havok into the engine for example. However I don't see Microsoft making their own engine, they abandoned XNA game framework a long time ago too, I'd expect them to buy a tech company like Unity instead. Regardless, I just think they want Havok for licensing money and Intel probably no longer wanted to maintain and improve it.

Doesnt directx 12 allow compute, lighting and memory all at once due to the multi CPU utilization?

AMD has a powerpoint online called DirectX12 Graphics API where it discusses this possibility. Not sure if the term embededed undermines that point or not.

 

[leeh]

I'm sure they will like the money, but the driver for the purchase would be control.

Sounds like they want to use it for cloud based physics. Either they had to create an engine from scratch or acquire one. (if they just licensed it themselves, they wouldn't be able to control the direction of any future development of the engine.)

I can only imagine what was going through Sataya's mind.

"Let's buy this very successful physics company which earn all their revenue by licencing, make it propitiatory; loose all the revenue, but keep control"

Come on.

 

[JeffG]

I can only imagine what was going through Sataya's mind.

"Let's buy this very successful physics company which earn all their revenue by licencing, make it propitiatory; loose all the revenue, but keep control"

Come on.

Reading comprehension isn't your strength, is it?

 

[Neuromancer]

They already were. Visual Studio is used across Naughty Dog: https://www.quora.com/What-IDE-does-Naughty-Dog-use

I feel so betrayed right now.

 

[Peltz]

Lol @ thread title change. Nice job mods.

 

[Mass Effect]

seriously guys

nothing is going to change.

 

[GravityMan]

This is the type of news story that gets a bunch of people to knee-jerk overreact and get their panties in a wad, even though in reality very little will change. Few if any developers will give a shit about this purchase...they'll just shrug their shoulders and keep on with what they're doing. Companies with competing products collaborate with each other all the time in other areas that it makes sense. And they license tech from each other all the time.

Businesses like money first and foremost.

This just made life a lot harder for any gamer that ever uttered the phrase, "I'll never give a cent to Microsoft after what they did...".

Odds are, most people who uttered silly phrases like that were probably giving a few cents to Microsoft without even realizing it on some of the non-MS products they bought.

 

[Atlas AS7-K]

I feel so betrayed right now.

Wha?? Why?

 

[Rngade85]

I'm sure they will like the money, but the driver for the purchase would be control.

Sounds like they want to use it for cloud based physics. Either they had to create an engine from scratch or acquire one. (if they just licensed it themselves, they wouldn't be able to control the direction of any future development of the engine.)

Yep this is it exactly. When developing cloud based physics it is much better to have control of the direction the engine takes and avoid lifelong fees when creating an online service. It makes sense that the mature tools and experience of havoc will accelerate the whole process after seeing the promise of crackdown.

And of course nothing will change with how it is currently used for local physics by developers. Just continue to pay the license fee.

 

[coughlanio]

Havok are just down the road from me here in Dublin. This will be interesting though, but I don't think it'll change anything.

Microsoft actually have a game released on PS4, and are continuing to support it.

 

[RodrigoDorta]

R* created their own engine RAGE iirc.

Yes, but the physics in RAGE is handled by NaturalMotion middleware named Euphoria. Since then this company was bought by Zynga: then some shit got down in GTA V, it think it uses a modified version of euphoria plus havok? But the physics is noticeably worse than the early 7th gen Rockstar games.

http://www.naturalmotion.com/middleware/euphoria/

I guess they changed it because the GTA IV feedback that the game was to "laggy" and "weighty", but the physics engine was pretty good mixing procedural animation and ragdoll behaviour.

It troubles me deeply, cause this kind of experimentation with different middlewares seems to be dying, and that kills really different feeling games, anyone remember when everything was unreal engine 3.0?

 

[Ricky Ricardo]

Wha?? Why?

Sarcasm man. He's aping the folk who are legitimately alarmed at this acquisition.

Spoiler

I think

 

[mrjohill]

So technically Microsoft owns a part of the last guardian?

 

[FordGTGuy]

No one said they owned blu-ray but all don't all part of the association get small royalties from it including Sony?

Being a part of the Blu Ray Association Microsoft receives royalties from every PS4 with a bluray player too.

Would this be any different than Sony owning Blu Ray and Microsoft using it in their system?

Don't call this guy no one, he's a person too!

 

[Cleve]

Oh man, you know what this is going to mean for PS4 games??

Spoiler

The check they were going to write anyway will be addressed differently.

 

[wachie]

Where is your God now Sony? Huh?

Yeah, thought so.

 

[GravityInsanity]

So Neil Druckman is making a game that is putting money in Microsofts pockets.

 

[Krappadizzle]

Microsoft, hell of a purchase.

 

[FinalStageBoss]

You guys know what this means right?

Spoiler

Absolutely nothing.

 

[Illucio]

So technically Microsoft owns a part of the last guardian?

No. They licensed a tool to Sony so they can make The Last Guardian.


Think of it like how pay for Photoshop, Adobe doesn't own what you made in Photoshop because it's a tool. but they own Photoshop.

 

[FordGTGuy]

You guys know what this means right?

Spoiler

Absolutely nothing.

Means a lot for their cloud computing efforts and maybe even DX12 integration.

 

[Captain Tuttle]

Some companies will probably stop using it, though. But this buy could mean a number of things.

Why would some companies stop using it?

 

[Dictator93]

Means a lot for their cloud computing efforts and maybe even DX12 integration.

I am confused by what is meant by dx12 integration... havok always already had a GPU physx component.

I am not really sure much will change on that front...

 

[FordGTGuy]

I am confused by what is meant by dx12 integration... havok always already had a GPU physx component.

I am not really sure much will change on that front...

I'm sure now that they own it they can make it work better with Havok going forward.

 

[LowlySmokeGuy]

Maybe, I'm being too optimistic, but I see this as a good thing all around. MS can improve it with their own ideas and with cloud stuff, and other developers can keep using it (hopefully), so win-win right?