Magic Leap demo.
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Magic Leap’s and King’s deals pave way for big jump in 2016 game transactions

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Augmented reality glasses firm Magic Leap confirmed today that it has raised $793.5 million from Alibaba Group and other investors. Together with the expected closing of the $5.9 billion acquisition of King by Activision Blizzard, the Magic Leap funding could do wonders for game-related deal activity in 2016.

As we noted yesterday, game industry transactions for investments and acquisitions dropped 81 percent in 2015, according to tech adviser Digi-Capital. But in this age of mega-deals, one big transaction can make a big difference in whether the year is up or down, and that influences how investors perceive the overall investment worthiness of the game industry.

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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.