Intel buys maker of Havoc game physics engine

[Irishman]

http://www.digg.com/gaming_news/Havoc_was_acquired_by_Intel

What do you think this news means for Mac gamers? Keep in mind Havoc - used in top-tier PC games like HL2 and Deus Ex: Invisible War - was the main cited reason for a Mac version not being ported. do you think Intel will be a more reasonable Mac partner for games?

Part of me wants to be optimistic, but the other part...

 

[rbarris]

http://www.digg.com/gaming_news/Havoc_was_acquired_by_Intel

What do you think this news means for Mac gamers? Keep in mind Havoc - used in top-tier PC games like HL2 and Deus Ex: Invisible War - was the main cited reason for a Mac version not being ported. do you think Intel will be a more reasonable Mac partner for games?

Part of me wants to be optimistic, but the other part...

Havok is available for Mac OS X.

 

[Chone]

With such high budgets in the gaming industry I doubt any studio is going to take the time and money to produce a native Mac port when there are already solutions like Boot Camp, Cider and even 3D Accelerated VMs for certain non-demanding games.

EA has already proven it can be done with high profile titles (BF2, C&C3, NFS, etc) and even though the results are dubious I doubt many developers (except Blizzard) are going to take the time to develop native mac ports when all they need is slap a Cider wrapper or ask gamers to install Boot Camp.

My guess is we will see tons of games on the Mac now but not many of them will be native ports.

 

[ravenvii]

This is interesting and all, but I have to ask, why? What would Havoc bring to Intel's business?

 

[pilotError]

This is interesting and all, but I have to ask, why? What would Havoc bring to Intel's business?

Intel is rumored to have some GPU's in the works. I would think they want to compete with AMD in this area.

 

[Chone]

Intel is rumored to have some GPU's in the works. I would think they want to compete with AMD in this area.

That would actually be great, 3 discrete GPU manufacturers=enormous win for the customer.

And Intel acquiring Havok only means physics will take off and CPUs will get better at them, this is bad new for Ageia but again, great news for consumers.

 

[Irishman]

Havok is available for Mac OS X.

As of when? Where might we find news of it?

 

[Jasonbot]

Havok is just an engine right? But when you use a PPU all the Havok-related code is ported off there right? Why does intel need a physics engine, maybe they wanna make better physics processing built in?

 

[fblack]

As of when? Where might we find news of it?

Maybe he's referring to Blizzard licensing havok late last year for both OSX and PCs.

 

[DanB91]

i think that since mac population is growing by an enormous percent, it would only be foolish not to port stuff to mac. epic does it, id does it, why shouldnt intel? plus apple and intel are close partners and it seems apple is interested in gaming

 

[bobber205]

I love Intel products and I would be so on a intel gpu.

 

[redsteven]

I love Intel products and I would be so on a intel gpu.

well they already have gpu's, they just suck

Although they TECHNICALLY might not be GPU's because they're integrated.