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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1339792
We were surprised (pleasantly) to learn during virtual CES that OWC (Other World Computing) had acquired LumaForge and its family of Jellyfish shared hardware/software storage solutions. The video production/workflow solutions put OWC squarely in the heart of the content creation industry. The products are already widely used by national and international studios and production operations including Disney, Sony, Adobe, major YouTube channel services and others. Of course, for us, video creation; production and distribution are the alpha-omega of content; but there is an even larger portion of the entertainment enjoyment public such as industry analysts Jon Peddie and Rob Enderle and Mark Poppin, publisher of babbletechreviews, constantly remind us … it’s all about gaming and especially AR/VR. During virtual CES, we were surprised to learn that the global video gaming industry took in an estimated $180B last year. Do you realize that outstripped NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL … combined! Sheess… Combined, home/portable console shipments will reach 18M units this year, up three percent earning $6B in revenues (up 16 percent); so we guess we have to agree … gaming is serious business. No wonder AMD and Nvidia are doing so well and their graphic chips, desktop/mobile graphics cards are hard to find. They literally drive the gaming technology. We like/respect one of the firms and their technology and you may prefer the other … choice is good. At different times, Peddie and Poppin have patiently explained to us why gaming has increased in popularity–especially during the pandemic. Folks – young, old, male, female – go online, they game heavily/seriously, they make new friends/acquaintances, they chat/gossip … they connect/stay connected. Got it. Even though we don’t game, we were looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077 because it stars Keanu Reeves and we’ve gotten to like him in the Matrix and John Wick movies. We know, stupid reason, but the soundtrack was equally cool, and we figured it had to be good because they dropped a cool $317M on development. Unfortunately, it had a lot of early pushback on its initial release due to bugs, poor console performance and overall, under delivering on its promises. Poppin said BabbleTechReview’s three editors reviewed the launch release giving it an 8/10 noting it is flawed but overall an amazing achievement that sold 13M copies. But it won’t be available for the PS5 or new Xbox X series until Q2. Peddie was kinder, noting that no new game comes without hiccups. He likes the graphics; story progresses well and gives the gamer option paths using almost the entire keyboard and mouse buttons.