Pokémon Go creator Niantic is reportedly in talks to sell its video games division to Scopely for $3.5 billion. The rumor comes from Bloomberg, which cites ‘several people familiar with the discussions’. According to the report, a deal could be announced in the coming weeks, but there’s still no guarantee it will be finalized.
The San Francisco-based developer started in 2010 as Niantic Labs, an internal startup within Google. However, it went independent in 2015 following Google’s restructuring into Alphabet, Inc.
Niantic made its business in the augmented reality game segment for mobile devices. After their debut title, Ingress, they adapted the location-based technology to create Pokémon Go, arguably one of the biggest financial successes of the last decade. By the end of 2016, the year that saw the game’s original launch, Pokémon Go had already been downloaded over 500 million times. By 2020, the game had grossed over $6 billion in revenue.
However, following Pokémon Go, Niantic was unable to replicate that success, even when using other big intellectual properties. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite launched in 2019 but never really took off and went offline less than three years later. NBA All-World was even more short-lived, lasting only a few months (between January and June 2023). Some hyped games, like MARVEL World of Heroes, were never even released. Others, like Monster Hunter NOW and Pikmin Bloom, were released but never really became successful. The latter game, for example, only made $44 million in revenue in the first two and a half years of its live service.
That’s probably why Niantic is interested in selling off its video games unit to Scopely, which operates big mobile games like Monopoly Go!, Marvel Strike Force, Star Trek Fleet Command, and WWE Champions, among others. Scopely was acquired in 2023 by the Savvy Games Group, which is wholly owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), for $4.9 billion.
