Digi-Capital investment bank released a research report about global gaming industry recently. The report noted that last year global gaming market recorded an all-time high M&A volume at up to US$ 4 billion, up 18% from 2011’s US$ 3.4 billion. However, transactional volume dropped 27 percent with fewer blockbuster deals being made over the course of last year.
The report also showed that Asian market has become the main source of the acquirers in the gaming market. In 2012, seven out of the ten largest transactions were initiated by the buys from China, Japan or Korea. Besides, the report predicted that Asia and Europe will account for 89% of the online games and mobile games income by 2015, and China’s share will be the largest, accounting for 32%.
According to the report, multiplayer online games made up the largest portion of gaming M&A activity value at 38%, followed by mobile at 27%, social and casual games at 18%. In comparison, transaction volume was led by mobile at 28%, followed by multiplayer online games at 20%. Gaming investments, however, had a difficult year, tumbling 57% to $853 million from the $2 billion in 2011. Multiplayer online games accounted for 18% of last year’s gaming investments while and the share of social networking, console and advertisement are relatively low. The $1 billion decrease in social game investments is mainly because many venture capital firms sense the social gaming bubble burst and turned away from the sector.
As was expected online games and mobile games will be maintaining strong growth and returns in the future.
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