After battling for many years on a force feedback standard, Microsoft and Immersion have shaken hands on a deal to share their technologies with one another. The two companies hope to give game makers and peripheral makers a standardized set of force feedback capabilities to make it easier to add the technology to their games.
While not indicated in the announcement, it appears that Immersion (a technology licensing company) may have licensed part of its technology to Microsoft, and in turn, Microsoft will help implement part of Immersion's technology into its DirectX gaming API. For game developers wanting to add force feedback support to their titles, building games for one force feedback standard should bring even more force feedback games to the gamers.