Hi Everyone. This is Take Off. We're like a hidden Easter egg in your favorite video game - surprising, delightful, and adding an extra layer of fun to your tech news consumption.

Here's what we're serving up today:

• Activision Carrying Microsoft 🎮️ 

• PS5 Back on Top 🎮

• Asteroids ☄️

• Trending Tools ⚒️ 

Activision Carrying Microsoft 🎮️ 

MSFT’s latest earnings numbers are in. And damn did they come in like a Blizzard.

Their gaming digits have rocketed to the moon, but it's not all home-grown XP.

Thanks to their $75.4B shopping spree on Activision Blizzard, the figures have got more padding than a linebacker in a Super Bowl final.

The nitty-gritty of Q3 shows a staggering $1.8B bump to $5.45B in gaming revenue. Big numbers, big gains, but let's remember—55 points of that come from their latest acquisition.

The rest? Down by 4%. Seems the non-Activision bits of Xbox are more like background NPCs in this earnings saga.

Similarly, for MSFT, the company’s total gaming revenue skyrocketed by 49%, but strip away Activision, and the growth deflates to a mere 5%.

Activision’s like that overachieving child bringing in the majority of the accolades for the fam.

The Good, the Bad, and the $2 Billion

The net impact of Activision Blizzard in Q2 added a staggering $2.08B in revenue but also introduced a $440M operating loss. The change from third-party to third-party content muddled the numbers further.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella proudly announced record-breaking monthly active users (MAU) on Xbox, PC, and mobile, with over 200M MAU on mobile alone, largely due to King, Activision’s mobile division.

Game Pass anyone?

Microsoft is bringing the next version of Call of Duty to its Game Pass subscription service.

Now, if you're familiar with the gaming biz, this isn't exactly a shocker, but it's still a pretty big deal as Microsoft is on a mission to transform Game Pass into the Netflix of Xbox and PC games, and adding a blockbuster like Call of Duty is a major move.

So, what does this mean for gamers? Instead of shelling out $70 to buy the latest Call of Duty, they can now rent it through Game Pass, which costs between $10 and $17 a month. This is a game-changer, literally, in how people pay for and access games.

If this move draws a flood of new subscribers, it could reshape the gaming payment model entirely.

And if Game Pass becomes a behemoth, Microsoft, currently trailing behind Sony and Nintendo in the console wars, could gain some serious influence in the gaming world, akin to Netflix’s dominance in streaming.

PS5 Back on Top 🎮

It’s been quite a ride for the gaming consoles this past year, with the market shooting up by 10% in 2023.

This comes after a few hiccups in 2022 due to those pesky supply chain issues which saw an 11% decrease in the market from 2021. 

But they’re back, baby! 

The Boss is Back

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a new boss in town.

Sony surpassed Nintendo to become the largest player in 2023, owing to the PS5’s popularity and finally, its availability all around the world. 

Finding a PS5 used to be like finding a Charizard card, but now, they’re everywhere, flying off the shelves like its predecessor, the PS4. 

They’ve acquired a whopping 49% market share, leaving Nintendo and Xbox in the muds. 

Software is Eating the World

And it’s not all hardware for these companies. In fact, on the software front, it’s raining cash for console developers, especially for Sony and Microsoft with nearly 70% of their revenue coming from software and services.

The PS5’s popularity is estimated to keep Sony in the leading position in 2024. The competition is expected to intensify with Microsoft’s portfolio refresh but that is expected in the 2nd half of 2024.

☄️ Asteroids ☄️

OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Perplexity all went down simultaneously this morning, likely due to an infrastructure issue. Google’s Gemini may have also briefly experienced issues. 🚧🔧

Databricks acquired data management company Tabular for over $1 billion. This move aims to unify their customer bases and communities. 📊🤝

Raspberry Pi is joining the AI trend with a new AI chip integrated into its camera software. In partnership with Hailo, Raspberry Pi's AI Kit, featuring the Hailo-8L M.2 accelerator, will run AI applications directly on the Raspberry Pi 5. 📷🤖

⚒️ Trending Tools ⚒️

🎓️ RikiGPT - Direct access to over 200 million academic sources

🔉 Fliki - Turn text into video with AI voices

💬 OrgaNice - HR platform for Slack-first teams, powered by AI

📰 Recommended Reading 📰

AI Jane: Artificial intelligence investment journalist building an easy to read ai investing email newsletter. Get smarter about investing in ai in 5 minutes.

The Aurorean: This newsletter scours 100+ sources so you don’t have to. The Aurorean is your guide to discover the essential news, research, beauty and humor in science every week.

The EV Universe: Keep up with the electric vehicle industry.

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