Earlier, Niantic announced the new mobile game "NBA All-World" created in cooperation with National Basketball League (NBA) and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). This is an officially licensed basketball game that can be played for free and incorporates positioning technology. In the game, players can find, challenge and compete with current NBA stars in the community, and can also recruit players into their own teams. A company spokesperson said: While Niantic is creating the above-mentioned mobile games, it will continue to develop " Pokémon GO" and other projects.
However, Niantic did not mention the specific launch time of "NBA All-World", and detailed information will be disclosed in the future. Judging from the description, this should be an NBA-themed "Pokémon GO", except that the Pokémon are replaced by NBA players. Friends who often read PhD articles must remember: Niantic has actually made many attempts before, and Pokémon has been replaced with various theme elements. Unfortunately: the results don’t seem to be very good!
Niantic has announced another new game, which looks promising. According to the latest report from the well-known foreign media "bloomberg", in fact, they have been working hard to find a second popular product after the popularity of "Pokémon GO" in 2016. . Niantic believed that the success of "Pokémon GO" could be replicated, so it created a bunch of similar products. As a result, it now needs to lay off about 85 to 90 employees, and four projects under development have also been cut!
Niantic CEO John Hanke wrote in an internal email to employees: The company is in a period of economic turmoil and has decided to reduce costs in various areas. One of the measures is to streamline personnel and cut redundant projects to put the company in a healthy state. As for the projects that have been axed, they include: the "Transformers" themed game "TRANSFORMERS: Heavy Metal" that has been released in 2021, the project "Hamlet" in cooperation with the theater company Punchdrunk, and two projects codenamed Blue Sky and Snowball projects.
From the case of "Transformers: Heavy Metal", we can see that although "NBA All-World" has been made public, the test results are not good. If players don't buy it, it may be axed. The doctor went to look through the information and found that Niantic's products after the popularity of "Pokémon GO" did not perform well. For example, "Harry Potter: Wizards Unite" and "Catan World Explorers" have ended operations. "Pikmin Bloom", a collaboration with Nintendo , also did not perform well.
What is completely different from the situation of the above-mentioned failed projects is that "Pokémon GO" is still one of the most popular mobile games around the world since its launch. It has been very profitable since it became a phenomenon-level product around 2017. According to data from Sensor Tower, an overseas statistics agency, "Pokémon GO" has been downloaded more than 1 billion times, and its annual average revenue is on the order of US$1 billion. This is the biggest reason why Niantic still has money to make new games despite running into obstacles.
The above-mentioned situation has also triggered heated discussions. Some people say that many of the above-mentioned IPs are not suitable for making AR games. Some people say that the reason why "Pokémon GO" is successful is because its own community is large enough and it is also Some people say that Niantic's own game content is extremely similar, preventing players from getting new experiences. In any case, as things stand, the success of "Pokémon GO" seems to be impossible to replicate. In order not to be slapped in the face in the future, the doctor carefully added the word "seems" here. Let us wait and see whether "NBA All-World" can be successful.
