Destiny, Halo, Call of Duty Physics Tech Company Now Owned by Microsoft

Havok, whose digital effects and game-physics middleware is used in franchises like Halo, Destiny, Dark Souls, Elder Scrolls, Call of Duty, and Assassin's Creed, has been purchased by Microsoft. The company was previously owned by chip-maker Intel, which bought it in 2007 for $110 million.

Terms of Microsoft's acquisition of Havok from Intel today were not disclosed.

In a statement, Microsoft said Havok's tools will complement the company's existing ones, such as DirectX 12, Visual Studio, and Microsoft Azure.

"Microsoft's acquisition of Havok continues our tradition of empowering developers by providing them with the tools to unleash their creativity to the world," Microsoft said. "We will continue to innovate for the benefit of development partners. Part of this innovation will include building the most complete cloud service, which we've just started to show through games like Crackdown 3."

It added: "Havok shares Microsoft's vision for empowering people to create worlds and experiences that have never been seen before, and we look forward to sharing more of this vision in the near future."

Havok's technology will continue to be licensed to run on competing platforms, such as those from Sony and Nintendo, a Microsoft representative confirmed to GameSpot.

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