Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Pokémon GO developer Niantic is having issues building metaverse them.
Like many other tech companies going through turbulent economic times, the company decided to lay off 8 percent of its staff. These layoffs affected around 85 to 90 people.
In email to staff, reported by Bloomberg, CEO John Hanke said companies need to reduce costs to best prepare for the economic storms that may lie ahead, he was quoted as saying Tech CrunchThursday (30/6/2022).
Niantic also canceled four upcoming projects such as Heavy Metal a Transformers game that has entered beta testing, Hamletand two other projects called Blue Sky and Snowball. Recently announced games such as NBA All-World and Peridot seems unaffected.
Temporary Pokémon GO generate more than US$1 billion in revenue every year, other games like Harry Potter: Wizards Unite which is now inaccessible has not been this successful.
Sikmin Bloomwhich was released in October, has been downloaded about 5.6 million times and generated about US$6.8 million in in-game spend, according to estimates from Sensor Tower.
As a comparison, Pokemon GO which was a huge hit grossing US$500 million in just the first two months, making it one of the games mobile with the fastest growing ever
In addition to augmented reality mobile games or augmented reality (AR), Niantic is building the Lightship AR Developer Kit, which makes tools for developing AR games publicly available free of charge to anyone with basic knowledge of the Unity game engine.
However, starting January 2023, users will have to pay to access these AR development tools, which could offer Niantic another source of revenue.
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