I’ve long been bewildered & bearish regarding Niantic, and about location-based AR games in general, even when they’re paired with AAA franchises (RIP Minecraft Earth). Now pile Transformers onto the dead-wagon:
Niantic has been unable to replicate that success [of Pokemon Go]. In 2019 it launched Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, which failed to find an audience and shut down earlier this year. Games based on the board game Catan and the Nintendo series Pikmin were also unsuccessful.
Ugh. Do people want experiences like this? Somehow they’ve continued to pay a billion+ dollars per year for Pokemon Go (!!), which hasn’t seemingly changed in its nearly six years of life—but so far it’s the exception that proves the rule.
But who knows: maybe AR wearables will change the game—and in the meantime Niantic & the NBA have just announced NBA All-World, which will “place NBA fans into the real-world metaverse.”
I was hooked on Pokemon Go for a while. It’s a surprisingly fun experience. I feel terrible for those Niantic folks who got laid off. They were looking into “NFT games” earlier this year, I’m hoping they ditched those plans as well. That space is sinking fast.