9 ms·
Microsoft acquires Havok
- shmerl 11y agoThat's too bad. More people should invest in Bullet now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_(software)
- blencdr 11y agowow... does it mean that anything microsoft touches is ruined just "because microsoft" ?
- Kliment 11y agoNot necessarily, but if this gets rolled into directx its availability on non-directx platforms might become restricted. This means it makes sense to cultivate alternatives before this happens.
- stonogo 11y agoIt's historically dangerous to do business at scale with Microsoft. If it were a matter of paying a license fee and using the software, nobody would mind, but getting large-scale licenses from Microsoft almost always involves ridiculous platform-exclusivity agreements and other unpleasant modi operandi. The good news is Havok technology may be integrated into DirectX, which would mean even small shops get cheap access to this technology. It all depends on whether Microsoft regards this acquisition as "making DirectX technology better" or "leveraging developers into preferential treatment for Microsoft platforms." We'll have to wait and see.
- pandaman 11y ago>but getting large-scale licenses from Microsoft almost always involves ridiculous platform-exclusivity agreements and other unpleasant modi operandi Can you give a few examples of these agreements? From what I know, everybody who develops for PlayStation licenses MS Visual Studio yet there had been quite a few PS exclusive games over the years. Is this the only exception? Genuinely curious.
- stonogo 11y agoHere's an example of Microsoft attempting to shove platform exclusivity into a deal (thankfully, they backed off): http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-12-04-microsoft-reveals-loads-of-indie-devs-signed-up-with-id-xbox http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-12-04-microsoft-revea... This sort of thing is not specific to Microsoft's gaming business. Microsoft's habit of using Windows OEM licensing as a tool to prevent computer manufacturers from shipping other operating systems (especially in the 1990s) is well-documented, for instance. In your example, the Visual Studio licenses are in-house to the development company. There is a different set of license agreements in place regarding the technology shipped out on game discs. Microsoft is well aware there's more money to be made there than from VS licenses, so they're more flexible on toolchain/development contracts than they are on middleware and production library contracts.
- pandaman 11y agoUmmmm, the article you've quoted is related to publishing contract and not a licensing agreement. Exclusivity on publishing is very common. You said that it's also "almost always" a part of licensing. Licensing is what I am curious about since I've never heard of anything like this. I also believe MS had been sued for the OEM racket in 90s and lost so, while it might be true, it's almost 20 years later now and also, I am not sure it's a licensing contract. Looks more like a re-seller/dealer relationship.
- shmerl 11y ago> The good news is Havok technology may be integrated into DirectX It would be nowhere good news, since it will make it exclusive to MS platforms only.
- Syssiphus 11y agoWell, I guess we will find out if this is going to have a negative effect on the multi-platform support.
- greggman 11y agoMicrosoft is in direct competition with Sony (XboxOne vs PS4). Also less less directly with Mac vs Windows, iOS+Android vs Windows Phone. I say less because this is about a physics engine used in games. XboxOne and PS4 are game machines where as those other platform have much broader interests. If Microsoft either stops supporting non-MS platform or makes them 2nd class (new features first appear on MS platform) then yes, this is a huge problem. Remember when EA bought Renderware back when tons of game studios were using it? GTA3 was written with it. Where is Renderware now? It's certainly possible nothing will change but it's just as possible the glaring conflict of interest will influence things badly.
- maximilianburke 11y ago> Where is Renderware now? Thankfully confined to the dustbins of history. EA didn't buy Renderware, they bought Criterion largely for their games studio and just happened to get Renderware as part of the package. The later versions of Renderware were, uhm, not good products so it is just as well they weren't generally available.
- otis_inf 11y agoNothing will change. Remember, the XBox One sports a Blu-ray drive, made by their archenemy Sony. (maybe not physically made by Sony, but most patents regarding Bluray are in Sony's hands)
- dclowd9901 11y agoAll this means is that MS is hedging their investments. Now for every dollar a Sony game makes (that has the Havok engine), MS is going to get a cut. It may be that Sony willingly boxes out MS by going with another engine, but the games industry doesn't seem that bitter.
- Narishma 11y agoSony has nothing to do with this. It's the game developers who use the engine.
- shmerl 11y agoWith their reputation - I'd say that should be the default expectation, unless proven otherwise. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
- nivla 11y agoOhh my I have never heard of this, do you have any more sources? /s Come on this is getting as boring as regex. Match /(microsoft|google|apple)/i replace with "EmbraceExtendExtinguish|Shutdown|Unoriginal".
- anon4 11y agoRain falls, scorpions sting, Buddhist monks give help, and Microsoft embrace-extend-extinguish. It's just in their nature. The corporation protects its financial interests instinctively, like the raindrop falls due to gravity. This is nothing new or unexpected, you just have to keep in mind that your interests might not be the same as Microsoft's (protip: Microsoft's sole interest is making Microsoft richer).
- shmerl 11y agoIf it's getting boring, you can wait and come back when MS will support Vulkan on Xbox. Let's see how bored you'll get while waiting.
- xutopia 11y agoDo we need to list the countless times they embraced something before using it to lock us all in to their own platform?
- iraphael 11y agoThis seems obviously correlated with the gaming side of MS. But I wonder if this acquisition is also related to MS's latest ventures into VR/AR, something that a lot of big companies seem to be doing right now. I hope Havok makes HoloLens a great product because I want that thing on my face.
- brobinson 11y agoA piece of middleware used in seemingly every single AAA game in the last decade... seems like a solid investment! That said, when I see a Havok splash screen when a game is launching, it means "prepare for unrealistic ragdolls" to me. I wish they would tone down how loose the physics on ragdolls are and end up with something more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi5adyccoKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi5adyccoKI
- reubenmorais 11y agoIf you look for videos of people actually getting hit by high powered weapons, or high speed cars, you'll realize that what's unrealistic is your expectation. People in those cases behave a lot like ragdolls, we just don't see it in real life very often (or at all), so don't know what to expect. Now this is just me making up theories, but I think that effect is exacerbated by the fact that kinetic energy scales with the square of velocity, and humans tend to think linearly.
- brobinson 11y agoI'm definitely aware of the Hollywood effect re: gunshots. :-) My main complaint with Havok is that once ragdoll mode is activated (usually upon a character's death or an explosion causes them to loose footing), their limbs essentially become spaghetti and flail about wildly. It breaks the immersion for me. A classic example of this is found in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Pretty fun to go through that game beating 90% of the enemies by kicking them into/off of things.
- wlievens 11y agoI loved that game! The Adventure of Ser Bootface Kicksalot! Too bad they screwed up the multiplayer game by essentially changing all of the mechanics.
- outworlder 11y agoI believe that the problem is that the ragdoll is indestructible. So the limbs, which in reality would have been ripped apart, are instead rendered unrealistically. Ripping limbs off wouldn't help with ratings though.
- rasz_pl 11y agoI hope they include it in next DirectX, and it kills Nvidia scam called PhysX.
- barranger 11y agoDon't know anything about PhysX, but I'd imagine they would. I'd also imagine that they'll start building in support for their cloud based physics as used in the upcoming Crackdown 3
- rasz_pl 11y agocloud based physics?? That is an oxymoron, physics is something happening right now, there is no room for latency due to streaming from the server, unless you want rubberbanding.
- artnep 11y agoCan anyone comment on current pros and cons of Havok vs PhysX (which was open-sourced recently by NVIDIA)?
- 0xcde4c3db 11y agoThe "open-sourcing" of PhysX has been widely misreported. It is still proprietary. The source is on GitHub, but it's only available to developers with a GameWorks account and isn't under a FOSS license.
- dogma1138 11y agoIt costs nothing to register, but the sources aren't for PhysX they are for the SDK and samples. The GameWorks source code isn't even available to most big developers you need a really special relationship with the green giant to get access to it.
- maccard 11y agoIf the source for the SDK is available, what part of PhysX isn't available? All of their core algorithms and solvers are available, although the Flex source code isn't available. Game works is another kettle of fish thigh.
- dogma1138 11y agoNot all solvers are available, GPU solver's aren't, FLEX and APEX are also currently not available. FLEX source won't be released as far as i can tell APEX will be released in some form or another in the future. The basic CPU solvers are there, but the license doesn't really allows you to modify them anyhow.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dogma1138 11y agoPhysX isn't Open Source only the free SDK is, all the stuff that actually makes PhysX work is proprietary and is part of NVIDIA GameWorks. Havok isn't just a physics engine although Havok Physics is probably the most used middleware that Havok makes. Which is better well it depends, PhysX is supported by more 3rd parties, but you can only have dedicated processing on CUDA enabled GPU's, PhysX supports both AMD and NVIDIA GPU's and probably in the future Intel and maybe mobile ones. Overall more games use PhysX these days than Havok, it was the defacto standard in the previous decade but not so much today, I don't think a single game came out this year which uses Havok.
- venomsnake 11y agoAhhh the piece of software that brought us the best weapon in game ever - the Painkiller stake gun. Impaling zombies on the walls with it was awesome. Good for them.
- rasz_pl 11y agoYou mean Half-Life gravity gun?
- DiabloD3 11y agoYou mean any given gun in Reflex?
- venomsnake 11y agoHalf Life 2 was family friendly, slow paced and with boring gameplay. Painkiller was brutal.
- partiallypro 11y agoI imagine this is two things for Microsoft: An investment to bolster DirectX and a cloud investment. Microsoft has shown that it wants to push physics calculations into the cloud. They have a pretty incredible demo displaying it, and it will be used for Crackdown. I can only suspect that they will want other dev shops to start utilizing this as it can bolster Azure.
- simoncion 11y ago> Microsoft has shown that it wants to push physics calculations into the cloud. Ugh. Yet another excuse for publishers to retain the ability to shut off single-player games some single-digit-number of years after release. :( Don't get me wrong, I've wanted new and better physics ever since Max Payne 2. Except for some niche games whose names I have forgotten ( :( ), we haven't really gotten good physics yet.
- imroot 11y agoIt's interesting that Intel seems to be selling off a lot of the acquisitions that they've acquired in the last few years -- first Mashery and now Havok. I wonder if this is a change of direction from Intel to go back to the chipset/foundry business.
- bjwbell 11y agoMy guess it's the new CEO at Intel, Brian Krzanich, he was previously head of the manufacturing division. The previous CEO was from marketing.
- ksec 11y agoAny examples of selling? Although I would agree, one of the largest acquisitions which i had no idea why was McAfee.....
- threeseed 11y agoI think Intel is just focusing on their core business. Especially given it is under existential threat from the ARM world.
- reitanqild 11y agoHopefully now that MS has changed Havok will continue to work on Linux. 10 years ago this would have been worrying.
- acd 11y agoAgree I wonder what that will mean for Linux gaming.
- shmerl 11y agoI doubt MS changed much when it comes to gaming. They still push their lock-in and didn't even join Vulkan working group (which is all about collaborative industry effort). So anything gaming related that they buy is a reason to worry.
- nivla 11y agoThat would explain why Minecraft is unplayable on PS4 ever since the acquisition. /s Microsoft has the same amount of reasons to "ban" Sony as Apple has to "ban" Samsung. Despite the lawsuits and disagreement Apple still buys a lot of their chips (including their core processor [1]) from Samsung because at the end of the day business is business! [1] http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-devices/samsung-supplying-apples-a9-processor-for-next-iphone/a/d-id/1319766 http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-devices/samsung...
- shmerl 11y agoSure, wait until Xbox only stuff will appear in it. Don't complain then that you weren't warned. And FYI, Minecraft was never uniformly supported on all platforms to begin with. Some always had more features than others.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 11y agoIt would be unwise to stop / break it from running on Playstation and Nintendo consoles otherwise the cross platform developers would not be interested in using the middleware so I'm not sure what they are intending on doing.