Games industry M&A reaches record smashing $25 billion in July 2016

Games industry mergers and acquisitions have reached a record breaking $25 billion so far in 2016.

Digi-Capital reports that with the acquisition of Playtika by a Chinese consortium for $4.4 billion in July 2016, the total spent on M&A in a year is the highest it has ever been since 2014.

Big names, big numbers

Other major acquisitions, such as Tencent acquiring 84.3% of Supercell shares for $8.6 billion, and the acquisition of King by Activision Blizzard for $5.9 billion, which completed in February 2016, also contributed greatly to this total.

Digi-Capital suggested that if Vivendi were to make a move on acquiring Ubisoft by the end of 2016, this number could rise beyond $30 billion. This would more than double the previous record set in 2014.

Digi-Capital has forecasted that mobile games revenue growth will continue throughout the next few years, with the compound annual growth rate expected to rise from $35 billion in 2016 to $48 billion by 2020.

This compares to an expected decline for the console gaming and PC industry from $24 billion to $21 billion by 2020.

In light of this, Digi-Capital said that, despite the high costs of many of these deals, "it makes perfect sense" for these M&As to have occurred.

Despite this however, it anticpates the highest growth markets over the next few years will be AR, VR and eSports.