Sony Announced Agreements With Havok and AGEIA

Added 07/21/2005 by Kisan Parikh

Sony has announced two more licensing agreements today. This time Havok and and AGEIA are involved. Sony obtains sublicensing rights of the physics and animation engines for PlayStation 3 as well as related content and debugging tools from Havock. The agreement with AGEIA has Sony obtaining sublicensing rights of the AGEIA PHysX SDK (NovodeX), a physics library developed by AGEIA.

What Havok allows:

With the use of Havok's physics engine, content creators will be able to have physics laws that govern the real world reproduced in the world of computer entertainment. Various factors that exist in the real world, such as gravity, collision, friction and other dynamic forces can be blended seamlessly with physically-based character animation and their images can be rendered swiftly in real-time. Through the licensing agreement, optimized PLAYSTATION 3 libraries of Havok's physics and animation engines as well as a wealth of tools, including linkers and debuggers, will be included as one total solution in the Software Development Kit for PLAYSTATION 3. Frontline support will be provided by SCEI.

What the AGEIA PhysX SDK allows:

The AGEIA PhysX SDK is the leading next-generation solution for creating compelling in-game physics and has been widely adopted by various game engines, such as the Unreal Engine 3 by Epic Games. Its multi-threaded capability makes the AGEIA PhysX SDK ideally equipped to leverage the power of the Cell processor. The licensing agreement allows for SCEI and AGEIA to optimize the AGEIA PhysX SDK for utilization in PLAYSTATION®3, and will be included in the Software Development Kit for PLAYSTATION 3. Frontline support will be provided by SCEI.

"It is our pleasure to have a strategic licensing agreement with Havok," said Masa Chatani, corporate executive and CTO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "With its cutting edge technology, Havok's physics engine is highly supported by numbers of content creators around the world. By including Havok's technology in the PS3 Software Development Kit, every developer will be able to utilize physics engine to create next generation content with real and natural effects."

"We are excited and proud to partner with SCEI to provide our physics and animation technology with the PS3 development kit," said David O'Meara, CEO of Havok. "Havok's technology has been used by major developers all over the world in more than a hundred games. Our agreement with SCEI opens the door for all PS3 developers to use Havok to create spectacular game worlds with incredibly realistic special effects and interactive game characters."

"A licensing agreement with AGEIA is a strategic move for us" said Masa Chatani, corporate executive and CTO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "With AGEIA PhysX SDK provided as part of Software Development Kit for PS3, we believe that numbers of content with entirely new forms of physics expressions optimizing the power of the Cell processor will be developed."

"This agreement between SCEI and AGEIA marks a significant landmark in the development of advanced physics-enabled games," said Manju Hegde, founder and CEO of AGEIA Technologies, Inc. "The capabilities of the AGEIA PhysX SDK combined with the power of the Cell architecture will give developers the tools necessary to introduce dynamic physical properties within games that will leapfrog game interactivity as we know it today."