Pokémon Go maker Niantic will lay off 230 staff – around a quarter of the company – and has cancelled a major upcoming project developed in conjunction with Marvel.
The company will close its recently-released NBA All-World game, end development of its upcoming Marvel World of Heroes project, and shut down its Los Angeles development studio. The news was communicated to staff via an email from company founder John Hanke, which has now been made public.
Pokémon Go, which remains lucrative, is safe. Indeed, Hanke calls it the company’s “top priority” as it slims down and refocuses on the future.
Explaining the cuts, Hanke blamed a decline in spending post-Covid and an increasingly competitive AR game market, but also said Niantic itself had to “bear responsibility for our own performance”.
Mobile gaming now required “dazzling quality and innovation”, with teams able to “build at the highest quality with powerful engagement features quickly and efficiently”, Hanke wrote.
“Our AR map and platform must deliver the features that developers want in a robust and reliable way. We have not met our goals in all of these areas.”
While NBA All-World will shut down and development on Marvel World of Heroes will cease, Niantic’s other current slate of games will remain for now – including Nintendo collaboration Pikmin Bloom, virtual pet game Peridot and the upcoming Monster Hunter Now, which is set for full release in September.
Niantic has struggled to follow Pokémon Go with another hit game, and has scrapped ideas for similar titles based around Transformers and Settlers of Catan among other, unnannounced ideas. Harry Potter game Magic Awakened closed down in early 2021, after two and a half years.
The company previously shed around 80 staff last year, around eight percent of its overall headcount.
Niantic will now look to keep Pokémon Go healthy and successful as a “forever game”, work to make existing projects a success, and refocus on building for the “emerging class of mixed-reality devices and future AR glasses”, which it aims to be a key player in building software and tools for.
“While you will see changes in the culture as we evolve into our newest form, our mission remains unchanged,” Hanke concluded. “We remain committed to building products and technology with a purpose, that leave the world better off than it was before, that serve both our needs as a company and the needs of our community of developers and Niantic Explorers in a way that is healthy and positive.”