Havok and Intel Working Together

Whenever one successful company buys another successful company, everyone wonders what the ultimate outcome will be. Is Havok's operational independence important to ongoing business prospects?

O'Meara: I think our independence is hugely important to Intel for a couple of reasons. One is that the credibility that Havok has with the gaming industry spills over onto Intel. But if Havok isn't independent, it won't have that credibility because it would be seen as partisan.

For Intel to make a much bigger play in gaming itself on the hardware side, it is really helpful to Intel that Havok is independent- because of the credibility Havok has. And Intel is going to gain hugely from the industry if the industry sees that Intel continues- as it has been doing- to allow Havok to be independent.

How has the relationship with Intel benefited Havok?

O'Meara: There have been a number of things that have been very good already in the six months since we were acquired by Intel. For example, the PC initiative underwritten by Intel [offering Havok Complete for free] is really great, because this initiative has the capability of significantly expanding the market beyond just the triple-A developers.

Broadening our capabilities beyond the entertainment industry is another anticipated development we expect to gain with Intel. In other words, we will go into serious gaming. Serious gaming includes non-entertainment applications, such as industrial and military simulations and training. Intel offers Havok a lot of capabilities and resources to enable us to go beyond the entertainment space in a couple of year's time.

Finally, I think there are technologies within Intel that are developed by Intel (without Intel looking for a commercial application from them). It would be very nice if we could create some commercial applications for some of the technologies that are being developed - take them out of Intel and put them into Havok. And that is part of the concept for Intel and Havok.

New Technologies, Future Breakthroughs

Gaming platforms will continue to advance and incorporate new technologies, with parallelism, new caching techniques, and other technologies expanding the realism and richness of the gaming experience.

As long as there are multiple audiences running games on platforms of varying capabilities, Havok will be providing tools to developers that bring the best in physics and animation to each platform.

Working together, Intel and Havok will certainly play a key role in exploring future options and extending the possibilities for achieving fast, efficient, realistic animation within 3-D worlds.

These efforts should also help open new avenues for less-experienced developers to create both 3-D objects and object behaviors based on sophisticated physics that will be the foundation of online environments such as Second Life.

The prospects for breakthrough animation advances for gaming and movies are extensive and a worldwide audience awaits the results of the collaborative activities of Intel and Havok.

Snappily-dressed game characters are wearing the latest fashion statements from Havok Cloth.

About Havok

Havok, an Intel company, was founded in Dublin, Ireland, in 1998 and is the premier provider of interactive software and services for digital media creators in the games and movie industries, with world-leading expertise in physics, animation, and tools.

Havok's business is to turn customer's creative aspirations into technical realities. Havok's modular suite of tools gives power to the creator, making sure that clients can reach new standards of realism and interactivity, while mitigating the overall cost and risks associated with creating today's leading video games and movies.

For their technology advances, Havok has earned an impressive collection of industry awards, including the National Academy of Television, Arts & Sciences Award, Game Developer Frontline Award, and a Develop Industry Excellence Award.

Havok has offices in Dublin, San Francisco, San Antonio, Calcutta, Munich, and Tokyo.