Microsoft acquires Havok

Havok has been founded back in 1998 in Dublin, Ireland. In mid-September 2007, Intel Corporation announced the acquisition of the company, which became its subsidiary. Finally, at the end of last week, Microsoft purchased Havok from Intel.

According to a blog post by Microsoft, "Havok is a fantastic addition to Microsoft’s existing tools and platform components for developers, including DirectX 12, Visual Studio and Microsoft Azure." The same source reveals that Microsoft plans to build "the most complete cloud service" that has been shown in games like Crackdown 3 already, but they will also continue to license Havok's tools to partners.

Havok provides interactive software and services, and its technology has been used in over 600 games so far, including notorious titles like Halo 2, Age of Empires III, Half-Life 2, Lost Planet 2, Fallout 3, Call of Duty, and many more.

As usual, the terms of the deal remain unchanged, but it looks like Microsoft will keep the Havok brand around. We will get back to this acquisition as soon as we hear more about it, as it seems Microsoft has interesting things in mind for gamers.