In 2016, Pokémon go Was the biggest video game on the planet that made software download data records and sent local messages in Hystere. Developer Niantic Inc. prepares for nine years and many less popular games later to sell his games division to Saudia Arabia owned by Scopely Inc. Report from Bloomberg. How much does one of the most popular video games in history cost? The report claims that the price for the department is an ophthalmological $ 3.5 billion. Niantic was contacted for a comment.
Pokemon goThe sale would be the latest turn in the history of one of the most unlikely CEOs in Gaming.
In 2001 John Hanke was a co -founder of a card technology company called Keyhole, which later took over from Google and should be fundamental in the development of Google Earth and Google Maps. In 2010, Hanke, who was rare success, decided a team in Google that would imagine the future of augmented reality gaming.
The team started penetrationThe first large global augmented reality game in 2013 and within two years seven million players had accumulated. But penetration would be remembered as a game less than as a proof of concept. In 2015, Hanke turned the Google Group into an independent company called Niantic. The studio started a year later Pokémon go In cooperation with (and considerable funds from) Google, Nintendo and the Pokemon Company.
By the end of 2016, Pokémon go was downloaded from more than 500 million players.
In the following years Pokémon goThe success that Hanke spoke about numerous conferences about the greater potential for augmented reality to combine the real world with the artificial. He introduced himself how augmented reality could bring the players into common virtual worlds as they occupied a physical one. All with the support of the Niantic tools.
In 2020 Covid-19 and millions of players scored on the spot. When the pandemic became an endemic, Niantic began to cancel the title. In 2023, the company released 230 employees, around 25% of its workforce. In addition to the deep cuts, Hanke emphasized the need for the company to concentrate on it Pokémon go And he admitted that the AR market was “develop more slowly than expected. “”
Now it seems that Hanke and what team members stay in Niantic could return what they have inspired long before video games: mapping. The data collected by all Niantic apps were used to create large geospatial models in order to achieve spatial intelligence. Last November, Eric Brachmann from Niantic and Victor Adrian Prisacariu published an update about the project: “At Niantic, we are groundbreaking the concept of a large geospatial model that uses large-scale mechanical learning to understand a scene and connect them to millions of others Scenes worldwide. “
Because it is in 2025 and the answer is always AI.
