Microsoft Acquires Intel Gaming Engine; Should Nvidia Worry?

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Intel acquired the popular game engine Havok from its Irish owners in 2007, but now Microsoft acquired it from Intel, the Windows maker said in a blog post on Friday. The gaming engine, which has been used in many popular titles across the gaming universe, is a new addition to Microsoft’s portfolio of products.

Microsoft games to benefit

Microsoft plans to continue to work on the engine, and will further improve upon it with help from its very own DirectX 12, Azure and Visual Studio, the company mentioned in its announcement.

“Havok is an amazing technology supplier in the games industry and the leading real-time physics creator,” Microsoft said.

Over the years, most of the big multi-platform franchises have made use of Havok for providing a seamless experience for their games including Activision Blizzard’s Call Of Duty, Destiny, Ubisoft Entertainment SA’s Assassins Creed, Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls series and many others.

Now, Havok, which has become a part of the Microsoft family, will help first-party developers in the development of cloud-powered experiences for the Xbox One and Windows platforms. The company’s upcoming game exclusively for the Xbox One, Crackdown 3, will also benefit from the engine according to the firm.

Intel giving Havok to Microsoft- not good for Nvidia

The financial terms of the deal were not revealed, but Microsoft is expected to have paid more than what Intel paid for Havok, which the chip maker acquired in 2007 for $110 million. It was Intel’s acquisition of Havok that pushed Nvidia to acquire PhysX from AGEIA Technologies in 2008. Nvidia will be more concerned now, as unlike Intel, who did not focus much on gaming, Microsoft has invested bigtime in gaming.

Interestingly, Microsoft said in the post that it will follow the same path as Havok was on, and will continue provide licenses to developers and rivals to make use of the engine in their games.

Whether or not Microsoft will benefit from the acquisition is something that we will only know with the passage of time. It is also yet to be seen whether the engine itself benefits from this acquisition. As of now, it can be said that the console manufacturer has made a bold move, and it will either turn Havoc and its magic into something legendary or it will just quietly slip into the past.

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