Twitch.tv

Twitch.tv is a website I use in place of TV. Twitch is built for people to stream video games for other people to watch and chat about. Twitch was once a small site with less than 10,000 people watching total. Since then it has grown to over 1 million viewers watching around the clock. Some people have even made their streaming on twitch into a career, receiving revenue from ads played on their stream as well as people donating and subscribing. Major companies such as Riot Games and Blizzard Entertainment, use this site to stream their events and tournaments, having over 500,000 viewers watching a single stream on occasion. Twitch is continuing to grow and evolve, I am very excited to see how far this once small company will go.

Pics:
http://kotaku.com/the-five-biggest-problems-with-twitch-1725647381
http://flusharcade.com/killing-boredom-with-twitch/

World of Warcraft Subscription numbers

In 2004, my all-time favorite gaming comapny, Blizzard Entertainment released their new MMORPG "World of Warcraft". Being the best of it's kind, the game quickly grew to 6 million subscribers in the first 2 years alone. After some expansions and 4 more years, the number of subscribers doubles to 12 million, making it the largest online game ever. But after 2011, the company started to make some changes to the game that not everyone liked, they made the game easier and less time-consuming to cater to the more casual players. This made the game's subscriber level plummet. In the second quarter of 2015, Blizzard released that their number of subscribers had gone down to 5.5 million, the same number they had 10 years ago. With a new expansion set to launch in the summer of 2016, can Blizzard redeem themselves and raise their sub levels back to what they used to be? I personally think that their numbers will vastly increase for a few months but slowly level out. Do I think that you should consider returning for the new expansion? Definitely.

Pics: 

http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/29/blizzard-announces-layoffs-of-600-employees-worldwide/

http://segmentnext.com/2015/08/25/world-of-warcraft-hunter-favourite-race/

The Unreal Engine

The Unreal engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games in 1998. Mostly used for first-person shooters, it has also been used to develop RPGs and MMORPGs. As of February 18, 2016 there exists 4 versions of this engine. The newest being used to develop Unreal Tournament. One thing to note about this engine and Epic Games in general is that they have released version 3 to the public (The Unreal Dev kit) for free and version 4 for $19/month plus revenue from developed games. Making quite a handful of indie games "Unreal games". I have personally messed around in this engine and I can say that it is very easy to use and creates some high quality visuals. I can't wait to see what Unreal tournament will be like in Unreal Engine 4.


Pictures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzvnbtQWS9c
http://www.3dartistonline.com/news/2011/10/an-epic-conclusion-to-gears-of-war-3/

The evolution of Windows

In my opinion, Windows 7 was by far the best operating system out for it's time. But when Microsoft developed their next version of windows, was it really for the better? When Windows 8 was released everyone including myself was excited for something new, at least until I bought and installed it. There are many things that I could have lived without, but the Start Menu wasn't one of them.

Instead of the start menu bar on the desktop, Microsoft thought it was a good idea to instead have an entire page for the start menu. This makes finding programs a herculean task, even if you know exactly where the program is. After two weeks, I was so fed up with this that I uninstalled Windows 8 and downgraded back to Windows 7. From the feedback of the community many people also did this, making Windows 8 a flop.



Knowing this, Microsoft went back to the drawing board and gave everyone what they wanted, the Start Menu! Even though it still has that Windows phone look to it, I can live with this change. And to make things even better, Microsoft is giving Windows 10 away for free if you have purchased Windows 7 or Windows 8. They have fully redeemed themselves.



Pictures:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/features
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Microsoft_Windows_logo_(Pre-XP).svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8.1

NVIDIA Geforce GTX TITAN Black

The NVIDIA Geforce GTX TITAN Black is truly an insane piece of hardware. This is the updated model of the original GTX TITAN, adding more frame-buffer memory and a ridiculous amount of memory. Nowadays, the normal amount of video memory a GPU has is either 2GB or 4GB, depending on the card. The GTX TITAN however, packs a 12GB memory punch that no other card rivals. Now the question that people have been asking ever since this was announced: Is it worth it? My answer is it isn't worth it right now. A 4GB card can run anything you want on ultra settings and still have great FPS while still fitting a budget. But, if you have $2000 dollars just sitting around then by all means, purchase a GTX TITAN now so you have it ready when technology catches up with it.

Photo origin: http://www.nvidia.com/gtx-700-graphics-cards/gtx-titan-black/