Titles for new handheld game systems from Sony and Nintendo helped drive video game industry sales up 21 percent to $4.1 billion in the first half of 2005, compared with $3.4 billion during the same period last year, according to a report from market research firm NPD Group. Losing ground were game consoles, which saw a 6 percent sales decline, from $631.6 million last year to $594 million in the first half of this year, and PC games, whose sales revenues were down 10.5 percent, to $405.4 million. Overall, however, video game sales for consoles, handhelds and the PC were up 9.2 percent to $2.8 billion; the top-selling title for the period was Sony's "Gran Turismo 4." Driving game sales were titles for Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS and Game Boy handhelds, which were up 81 percent in the first half of 2005; handheld hardware sales also grew 74 percent. "The robust performance of the portable market certainly contributed to the considerable sales growth of the industry but another significant contributor to industry performance is software," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.
The global cloud computing market is undergoing new significant growth, driven by the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and the demand for flexible, scalable infrastructure. The recent market study by International Data Corporation (IDC) provides compelling evidence of this transformation, highlighting the accelerating growth in cloud infrastructure spending and the pivotal role of AI in shaping the industry's future trajectory. Shared Infrastructure Market Development The study reveals a 36.9 percent year-over-year worldwide increase in spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments in the first quarter of 2024, reaching $33 billion. This growth substantially outpaced non-cloud infrastructure spending, which saw a modest 5.7 percent increase to $13.9 billion during the same period. The surge in cloud infrastructure spending was partially fueled by an 11.4 percent growth in unit demand, influenced by higher average selling prices, primari