Report: Pokémon Go Hits the Market with a Hefty Price Tag

Back in 2016, Pokémon Go was nothing short of a global phenomenon, shattering software download records and creating quite the buzz in local news. Fast forward nine years and several less renowned titles later, and Niantic Inc., the company behind this cultural wave, seems poised to sell its gaming division. According to Bloomberg, the buyer is Scopely Inc., which is owned by Saudi Arabia, and the deal is reportedly valued at a staggering $3.5 billion. Niantic has yet to comment on this development.

This potential sale marks another chapter in the story of one of the gaming industry’s most intriguing figures: John Hanke. He co-founded a company named Keyhole back in 2001, which played a key role in the creation of Google Earth and Google Maps after Google acquired it. In 2010, Hanke embraced yet another adventure at Google, this time spearheading a team focused on exploring the future of augmented reality (AR) gaming.

The team’s groundbreaking work led to the launch of Ingress in 2013, the first significant global AR game, which attracted around seven million players within a couple of years. Ingress was more than just a game; it served as a proof of concept. By 2015, Hanke took a bold step, spinning the Google group out to form Niantic as an independent company. As history would have it, a year later they unleashed Pokémon Go with considerable backing from Google, Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company.

By the close of 2016, Pokémon Go had captured the attention of over 500 million players worldwide.

In the wake of Pokémon Go’s enormous success, Hanke became a frequent speaker at conferences, passionately discussing the vast potential of AR to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds. With Niantic’s innovative tools, he envisioned players engaging in shared virtual worlds while exploring the physical one around them.

The onset of COVID-19 in 2020 threw a wrench into the works, with millions of players confined to their homes. As the pandemic transitioned to an endemic stage, Niantic made the tough decision to cancel several projects. By 2023, they further streamlined by laying off around 230 employees, approximately a quarter of their staff. Hanke pointed to the company’s need to concentrate on Pokémon Go while acknowledging the AR market’s slower-than-expected evolution.

Now, it seems Hanke and the remaining team at Niantic could be circling back to their roots in mapping. The vast amounts of data collected through Niantic’s apps are being utilized to create comprehensive geospatial models aimed at achieving significant advancements in spatial intelligence. Last November, a project update from Niantic’s Eric Brachmann and Victor Adrian Prisacariu revealed exciting developments: “At Niantic, we are pioneering the concept of a Large Geospatial Model that will use large-scale machine learning to understand a scene and connect it to millions of other scenes globally.”

In 2025, AI seems to be the go-to solution to nearly everything.