Mergers and acquisitions shatter records in 2012

Mergers and acquisitions in the games industry during 2012 have broken all previous records, according to new research.

Conducted by Digi-Capital Global Games Investment, the review states that the run-rate for M&A’s is 40 per cent higher than in 2011, the previous record year.

During last year, a total of 113 mergers and acquisitions took place in the games industry, as reported in the review, generating a transaction value of $3.4 billion.

A total of 71 transactions identified so far this year in the report however have been worth an accumulated total of $3.6 billion, with a average of $51m per transaction.

The value of transactions made by the end of the third quarter this year is also up 105 per cent on the total value recorded from the entirety of the previous year.

Despite the total value of mergers and acquisitions rising throughout 2012, games investment was down considerably from the $2bn in transaction value generated last year, with just $591 worth of game investment generated so far.

Six of the ten largest merges and acquisitions meanwhile were made by companies based in China, Japan and South Korea.

The report also highlights that MMOs, mobile, social/casual and middleware firms dominated in mergers and acquisitions during the first half of 2012, whilst console and PC lagged behind in terms of value.

The full review however details the differentiation in value between the markets such as the latter end of the current console cycle.

You can view the full review here.