Niantic, the corporate behind Pokémon Go (2016), is reportedly in talks with Saudi Arabia-owned Scopely to promote its gaming division.
In keeping with a Bloomberg report citing folks aware of the talks, the report maintains the businesses are at the moment discussing a $3.5 billion acquisition worth, which may conclude within the coming weeks.
This would come with the switch of Pokémon Go along with Niantic’s different cellular video games, corresponding to Monster Hunter Now and Pikmin Bloom.
Niantic can be identified for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, which tried to duplicate the success of Pokémon Go, however critically failed, forcing the corporate to close down improvement in 2022.
Offered the sale goes by way of, this would depart the San Francisco-based Niantic to concentrate on its rising checklist of AR improvement platforms and geo-spatial mapping instruments.
In Might 2022, Niantic launched its Lightship Visible Positioning System, which kinds an underlying 3D map of the world so AR units can share the identical body of reference, even on large scales.
Then, later that yr, the corporate introduced it was working with Qualcomm on a reference AR headset primarily based on the Snapdragon AR2 platform, which on the time the corporate referred to as an “out of doors AR headset.”
Whereas Niantic hasn’t launched any {hardware} as such, final September the corporate introduced it was coming into in a partnership with Snap to convey its AR pet simulator sport Peridot to Snap’s fifth technology of Spectacles.
Then, just a few months later, the corporate launched its VPS-integrated WebXR app Into The Scaniverse, which was constructed utilizing Niantic Studio to let customers seize real-world areas in 3D and think about on Meta Quest.
With out its gaming properties, we’d count on Niantic to primarily be all-in on AR, as the corporate would ostensibly look to leverage VPS, Niantic Studio and Niantic Spatial Platform SDK.
