Microsoft has purchased Havok from Intel according to an announcement from the software giant today. Havok is a physics engine that has been utilized in hundreds of games over the last fifteen years. Even if you have not heard of the Havok engine you are more than likely acquainted with some of the video games it powers. These titles include Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, Halo, Infamous: Second Son and upcoming games such as Star Wars: Battlefront, No Man’s Sky, Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last Guardian and Uncharted 4. The cost of the acquisition was not disclosed in the announcement.
The engine will still be available for developers to license for use in their video games. While Microsoft did not specify any internal projects the will use Havok, the press release mentioned the possibility of using the engine to power cloud-based physics similar to those seen with Cloudgine in Crackdown 3. The long term financial benefit of the acquisition lies in collecting licensing fees from future games that utilize the Havok engine.
