Game investments surpassed $500M in Q1 2016, but there's still some weakness.
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Game deals rebounded in Q1, but mobile game investments plunged

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

Games deals rebounded in the first quarter of the year, with game startups raising more than $500 million, according to tech adviser Digi-Capital. But there are “rocks beneath the surface” of that good news as mobile game investments plunged, the report said.

Last year was the worst in a decade for game deals, or the combination of both game investments and mergers and acquisitions. The Q1 numbers make that look like the market thawed, but the $500 million raised in Q1 included three big deals that were more than half the total, according to the report by Tim Merel, the managing director of Digi-Capital and CEO of Eyetouch Reality.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.