Research conducted by investment bank Digi-Capital claims that the industry is set to be worth $83 billion by the year 2016. We'd like to see a coin block that could hold that much moolah.

According to Develop Online, Digi-Capital's research says that online and mobile games, "could have a revenue share of $48 billion in 2016, 55% of the entire game industry." They say a lot of what could drive sales would be free-to-play games, or games based on a freemium model. There was also a section that covered mergers and acquisitions, which totaled $4 billion this year.

It also looked like massively multiplayer online role-playing games made up a majority of the mergers and acquisitions, at 38% for all transactions while the mobile market made up 27%, social gaming made up 18%, middleware and gamification at 13%, and the console companies at 4%.

Investments took a hit because of social gaming, which caused a 94% decline compared to 2011's numbers. And Kickstarter helped make the industry $49 million throughout the year with its crowdfunding efforts.

The full report can be found here, if you'd like to see the details for yourself.

More From 97.9 WGRD