Electronic Arts, 2K Adopt PhysX For Internal Studios

Graphics company Nvidia has revealed partnerships with Electronic Arts and 2K Games that will see PhysX physics middleware licensed for use throughout the publishers' internal studios. The announcement follows a deal with EA publicized last month, through which the PC version of DICE's Mirror's Edge gets enhanced physics support via PhysX. Nvidia continues to trumpet its GPU acceleration feature, which allows PhysX to gain performance benefits from graphics cards equipped with Nvidia CUDA architecture -- standard on GeForce models since the 8-series. Main PhysX competitor Havok, owned by chip manufacturer Intel, has so far not implemented a GPU acceleration system, although it is expected to go down a similar path with Intel's upcoming Larrabee GPU. Nvidia consumer products senior PR manager Bryan Del Rizzo tells Gamasutra that the deal inked with EA and 2K is not an exclusivity agreement -- individual studios can still use competing middleware options such as Havok. However, according to Del Rizzo, support and licensing for PhysX will be standard throughout the two publishers' organizations, meaning their studios may well "default" to PhysX for financial and technical reasons. "They can choose whatever they want to use, but as a corporation they've standardized on Nvidia Physx tech, and that's what they'll be rolling out to studios," Del Rizzo says. "It would make sense for them to use PhysX, but if for some reason one of the studios said they want to use Havok, that would be a question for EA if they could make that choice. Given the scope of the agreement, my understanding is that EA would probably recommend they use PhysX." Says EA Redwood Shores CTO Tim Wilson, "PhysX is a great physics solution for the most popular platforms, and we're happy to make it available for EA’s development teams worldwide." "Developing games with an interactive story and immersive gameplay remains our number one priority," adds 2K Games technology director Jacob Hawley. "Aligning with technology leaders like NVIDIA allows our teams to concentrate on making great games."