Tencent is the biggest fish in the $22 billion game investment pond

In game-industry deal-making, there’s Tencent, then there’s everyone else. The Chinese behemoth led or participated in over $4 of every $10 invested in games companies worldwide in the last 12 months to the end of Q1 2018. It was involved either sell-side or buy-side in over three-quarters of all games M&A deal value (i.e., dollars) in the same period. And this is in the context of record totals (not just Tencent) over $2.1 billion games investment and over $14.4 billion games M&A in the first quarter of this year alone.

Digi-Capital’s new Games Report and Deals Database Q2 2018 tracked a total of nearly $22 billion total games market investments and M&As (again not just Tencent) in the last 12 months, as well as forecasting global games software/hardware market revenue to top $165 billion this year and over $230 billion by 2022. Let’s dive into the detail to see what’s behind the numbers.