According to a report by Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources, Niantic, the renowned company behind the popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go, is reportedly considering the sale of its game development business.
The potential deal, valued at approximately $3.5 billion, is being explored with Scopely, a mobile game developer owned by Saudi Arabia-based Savvy Games Group, although the terms of the agreement have not been officially disclosed.
Requests for comment from both Niantic and Scopely have thus far gone unanswered.
Niantic has distinguished itself as one of the few companies to successfully leverage its augmented reality capabilities to develop engaging games. Its inaugural title, Ingress, received widespread acclaim for its innovative geography-based approach to territory control, while Pokémon Go, released in 2016, catapulted the company to global fame, becoming a cultural phenomenon.
Although its subsequent titles have achieved relative success, they have not matched the unprecedented popularity of Pokémon Go. In recent years, the company has undergone significant restructuring, including the layoff of 8% of its staff and the termination of four projects, including Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, in 2022. The following year, Niantic laid off an additional 230 employees and canceled its NBA and Marvel-related games.
In 2024, the company introduced an updated version of its Scaniverse app, enabling users to create models of real-world objects and share the data with developers. Furthermore, in November, Niantic announced its intention to develop a large geospatial model utilizing machine learning to “understand a scene and connect it to millions of other scenes globally,” as outlined on its official website.
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