Microsoft Acquires Havok Physics Engine From Intel

The powerful Havok Engine has served as the foundation of countless games, including the Brothers in Arms franchise, Bioshock series, and the Halo games. On Oct. 2, 2015 tech giant Microsoft acquired Havok from Intel. Microsoft has long provided players a fantastic operating system for gaming, and since 2001, a console environment as well.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Havok in particular targets developers, as a post on the Microsoft Blog explained.

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.

Among Microsoft's other dev-centric technologies are DirectX (now on version 12), Visual Studio, and Azure. It's one more holding in a strong lineup. In the past, Havok teamed up with publishers such as EA and Ubisoft, and it'll be fascinating to see where the new Microsoft-controlled Havok goes. According to a recent press release, the newfound partnership will focus on cloud gaming, as exhibited in titles like Crackdown 3. 

Lately, cloud gaming services have been on the rise, exhibited by GameFly's streaming service, NVIDIA's GeForce Now, and Steam in-home streaming. Apparently, Microsoft plans to expand its multiplayer cloud functionality, and owning Havok will undoubetedly lead to further opportunities for experimentation and innovation. One of the benefits of cloud gaming is that compute power comes from servers, which can produce more impressive results than even a capable piece of hardware like the Xbox One or Playstation 4. Microsoft's acquitision of Havok is monumental, with gamers and developers notable seeing the greatest impact.