An nameless reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Pokemon GO maker Niantic laid off 230 staff as we speak, only one yr after it laid off round 90 staff. Throughout final yr’s layoffs, Niantic canceled 4 initiatives, together with a Transformers recreation. Some Niantic video games will meet the identical destiny this time round. After 4 months within the App Retailer, Niantic is shutting down NBA All-World; the corporate may even cancel manufacturing on a recreation based mostly on the Marvel franchise. “Within the wake of the income surge we noticed throughout Covid, we grew our headcount and associated bills with a view to pursue progress extra aggressively,” CEO John Hanke wrote in an e-mail to staff, cross-posted to the corporate weblog.
This has been a typical chorus among the many tons of of tech corporations which have performed layoffs over the past yr — corporations claimed they overhired throughout the pandemic and now must right-size their groups. In Niantic’s case, Hanke mentioned that income has returned to pre-pandemic ranges, and new initiatives haven’t delivered as a lot income as they might have hoped. One such new mission is Peridot, a Tamagotchi-like cellular recreation. Niantic’s first try at unique IP since Ingress, Peridot launched in Could. However in accordance with market intelligence agency Sensor Tower, Peridot has solely made $1.4 million in gross in-app buy income to this point. […] Pokemon GO is Niantic’s money cow, pulling in additional than $1 billion in in-app purchases every year since 2020. However gamers have additionally been feeling slighted by Niantic’s in-app buy system. […]
Although video games like Peridot haven’t but proved financially sustainable, Niantic has a whole enterprise arm separate from its personal video games. Niantic’s Lightship AR developer package makes it doable for any developer who is aware of the right way to use Unity to make AR video games. Builders even have entry to Niantic’s spectacular visible positioning system (VPS), which lets customers work together with native landmarks of their real-world environment. Hanke even talked about in his observe to staff that the corporate desires to ramp up its give attention to constructing for mixed-reality units and AR glasses. So, if Niantic can not seem to make a profitable follow-up to Pokemon GO, perhaps its developer instruments can maintain the corporate heading in the right direction.
