Hello Trainers, Niantic has just a undertaken pretty big organizational update, as John Hanke Niantic’s CEO shared via email with all of Niantic’s staff. They are making some pretty major changes to their organization in the hopes that it allow them to better focus and prioritize their projects.
What’s Happening
Niantic announced that they are closing their LA studios and laying off 230 Niantic Employees. As a result of this refocusing, they are also going to be sunsetting NBA All-World, and stopping production on Marvel: World of Heroes.
Why Are They Doing This?
John Hanke was quite honest in his email, Niantic allowed its expenses to grow faster than its revenue. They took the revenue boon they received during Covid and expanded their project list and their headcount more aggressively than they should have. When their revenues returned to pre-Covid levels their new projects were not returning revenue in a manner that was sustainable long term. This coupled with the recent economic slowdown meant that hard choices had to be made. So the decision had to be made to cut certain projects, and when projects get cut people cuts are inevitably not far behind.
“This change will bring expenses and revenue back into line while preserving our core assets and long term upside.” – John Hanke
What does this mean for Pokémon Go?
“The top priority is to keep Pokémon GO healthy and growing as a forever game. While we made some adjustments to the Pokémon GO team, our investment in the product and team continues to grow.” – John Hanke
John Hanke has said that keeping Pokémon Go healthy and growing as a game that can last forever is their top priority. Which is good news for all of us. Some adjustments to the Pokémon Go Team were made, however, no specifics were announced. It appears that Pokémon Go will remain Niantic’s number-one priority for the foreseeable future, and we can expect the growth and development of the game to continue.
What does this mean for other Niantic games?
“We are reducing and focusing our platform team in line with the reduced number of games we are building, with the goal to do less, better.” – John Hanke
John Hanke said that he is confident about the prospects for Pikmin Bloom, Peridot, and Monster Hunter Now. So I wouldn’t expect to see many changes in regards to those games. He also mentioned that by reducing and focusing their teams to be more in line with the number of games they are building.
Niantic wants to continue to invest in its AR map and AR platform to continue to enable developers to build and grow their own AR experiences and they believe that their Visual Positioning System and human-centric AR map are the way forward.
Parting Thoughts
He also said we can “expect a more direct and results-based culture” moving forward and that they are moving to cut out unnecessary processes and unclear decision-making. What that means for us as Pokémon Go Trainers remains to be seen. There have been times in the past, and recently, when it seemed like everybody at Niantic wasn’t on the same page, we can only hope that a more direct and streamlined chain of command at Niantic can only mean good things for us.
I feel for all those who lost their jobs today, it’s a tough day and we at GoHub want to thank everybody for all of their hard work and dedication. We can only hope that everybody lands on their feet.
That’s all for now Trainers, if we hear more we’ll keep you updated. Stay safe out there.
