Media Entertainment Case Study

In recent years, media and entertainment has become highly saturated with digital ink products and writing tools. Yet the overall market has not seen a compelling improvement in existing hardware. With rising economic pressures to work faster and more cost-effectively, many users struggle with the choice of using their existing technologies—many of which are considered outdated—or investing time and money into innovation.

Other triggers, such as the growth rate of artificial intelligence and the demand for more compelling content, are challenging users to consider new types of digital solutions to enhance how they work, accelerate media workflows, and gain a competitive edge.

Wacom is on a mission to develop and advance a range of digital pen and ink technologies for Wacom-branded products and for their many partner solutions. The company makes research and development a central focus of their mission to enable the best digital and pen experiences that empower users to work, create, and communicate across all areas of their lives.

Today, Wacom is utilizing their technologies and experience to create new digital pen and ink solutions for broad consumer markets. They have equipped more than 100 million smartphone units with Wacom pen and ink technology. Users expect these tools to be convenient and easy to operate, providing a seamless interface for their electronic devices, pen-enabled smartphones, and tablets. These capabilities are becoming more and more popular.

To keep up with demand, Wacom experts test the performance of various tablets and pen displays against the major software used in media and entertainment. Their job is to push applications to the breaking point to confirm that Wacom tools are more resilient than the software and other hardware. This process requires powerful computing to run numerous complex workloads. Without a high performance laptop to do their work, Wacom struggled to develop more advanced, industry-leading tools.

To stress test their products, Wacom needed to exercise the hardware, software, and each tool against the highest demands of the end users’ environments. It is insufficient to run tests on computing systems that feature legacy hardware or consume fewer resources than the industry standard. Developing products that are likely to succeed in the real world means choosing a technology partner that understands the extreme compute requirements of media and entertainment and can deliver a right-sized system to support all their unique tools and applications.

Wacom selected MSI to help them create the best possible digital ink experience. Wacom purchased high performance laptops from MSI to push their solutions to the limit. Because MSI stays at the forefront of emerging technology trends, Wacom knew the laptops would allow them to validate their most advanced and cutting-edge tools.

According to Joe Sliger, QA Manager of XR and Virtualization for Wacom, “The great part about working with MSI is that their machines fulfill both ends of the spectrum—they stand up to the test of time. The MSI laptops we bought years ago for stress testing products are still being used in the industry today.” Wacom sets a standard of testing their products on the most advanced hardware. “Our goal is to make sure our tools perform at or above expectation. The only way to fulfill that promise is to pair them with tools of the same high caliber. MSI is that partner.”

Digital pens and digital ink are at the center of all our activities. Ink is the medium humans have been using for thousands of years to express and preserve information. Creatives use it to visualize their inspirations, and everyone uses ink to capture ideas and communicate.

Wacom believes digital ink should be widely accessible and constantly evolving as our needs change and diversify. Moving forward, Wacom is committed to developing new and exciting products that enable these goals and empower our ability to share ideas, create, and evolve. MSI computing helps make that a reality.

The biggest gain from this partnership is the promise of a new level of performance. Historically, Wacom has used the MSI Creator series for their tradeshow systems. Since migrating to remote work solutions in 2020, the MSI laptop is now the primary solution used for product testing. The laptop has robust processing capacity and highly accurate color display to meet the demands of any software, from 2D animation to visual effects and virtual production software. Wacom experts can run multiple 10 bit, 4K Cintiq Pro pen displays at a full 120Hz, while testing software such as Black Magic, Adobe, Autodesk, and Boris.

“My laptop runs 24k displays at 120 Hz and full 10 bit color, in addition to the 240Hz display it comes with,” Sliger added, “That is enough compute powerful to stand up to an at-home workstation. The ease of mobility is like icing on the cake.”

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