A good physics system can make or break a game. Most of Half-Life 2's puzzles were centered around its physics engine, while Mass Effect's Mako vehicle was nearly impossible to drive thanks to shoddy physics. With the added power of current-gen consoles, physics are only going to become more and more important — and Microsoft just picked up one of the biggest physics engines in the industry.

You may not know the name "Havok," but you've definitely played a Havok-powered game: the physics engine has been featured in more than 600 different games, from Mortal Kombat X to Dark Souls to Uncharted. Now, thanks to a deal with former owner Intel, Microsoft has successfully acquired Havok.

"Today, we are proud to announce that Microsoft has acquired Havok, the leading provider of 3D physics, from Intel.

As we welcome Havok to the Microsoft family, we will continue to work with developers to create great gaming experiences, and continue to license Havok's development tools to partners. We believe that Havok is a fantastic addition to Microsoft's existing tools and platform components for developers, including DirectX 12, Visual Studio and Microsoft Azure."

It's clear that Microsoft has big plans for Havok. With the company's renewed focus on PC gaming, it only makes sense to have such powerful tools available for little to no cost — and Havok won't just affect the PC side of gaming, either. According to the blog post, Microsoft is planning on implementing Havok physics into the Xbox One's processing cloud — a feature that fans might see alongside Crackdown 3.

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

For anyone who's worried that Microsoft games will be the only ones with decent physics, don't be: the publisher made it clear that all of Havok's preexisting partnerships will be left intact. Microsoft will be making a bunch of money on licensing deals, that's a given, but it's highly unlikely that Havok itself will change in any noticeable way.

For more on Microsoft's acquisition of Havok, head on over to the official blog post.

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