Intel, the chip making giant, has entered into an agreement to purchase Havok, the creators of the ever popular physics engine for a reported $21 million.

If you haven’t heard of Havok, it’s the physics engine behind some of the biggest games on the market. Recent big titles include Stranglehold, BioShock, and Oblivion. What many people don’t know is the same company produces an engine to create special effects in movies, which was used in blockbuster titles like The Matrix.

No idea yet how this in going to impact future game development with the Havok engine, but there’s some really smart people over at Intel that could really take it to the next level.

More competition for Madden has come up from NaturalMotion. Their new game, Backbreaker, looks to revolutionize how players interact on the field.

Using the Euphoria engine, every tackle is different and players move exactly how they would in the real world.

“Backbreaker is the first football game with truly interactive tackles. By utilizing our motion synthesis engine, euphoria, players will never make the same tackle twice, giving them an intensely unique experience every time they play the game,” said NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil. “Backbreaker puts players in the middle of the gridiron by providing a pure, realistic football experience only possible on next-generation consoles.”

Well, the sure have tackling down right. Now if they can get the rest of the game to play well, this very well may put some pressure on Madden to actually make some more progress in the game.

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We are seeing more deals involving different dynamic ad agencies and video game developers popping up with the biggest one involving EA and Microsoft. These in game ads are billed as great things and from an advertisers perspective that is getting in product placement opportunities across a widespread demographic they are fantastic, but what do they mean to us the consumer?

Since we are allowing all these ads into our homes involuntarily, will we get an option to turn them off? I paid for a video game not commercials, on television I can change the station but what about my video games, I am forced to sit there and see ads I don’t care for as I race through whatever stage I am on.

Will this dawn of new ad placements in our video games lead to lowering of prices or consoles? I doubt this very much, ads are already in certain games and we all are still paying top dollar. We as video game consumers are not benefiting in any way shape or form, from these new “dynamic” ads, so why should I sit and take them?

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At yesterday’s Apple WWDC (that’s Worldwide Developer Conference for the lay person), id Software’s John Carmack demoed the new game engine he’s been working on, dubbed id Tech 5.

Looks pretty damn cool. As per Carmack, more will be shown at E3 on the specific game being developed on this engine for Mac, PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. Sounds like a plan to me.