Niantic, the company behind the widely popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go, is reportedly considering selling its game development division, according to Bloomberg, which cited anonymous sources.
The company is said to be in talks with mobile game developer Scopely, which is owned by Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group, for a deal valued at around $3.5 billion.
Neither Niantic nor Scopely has commented on the matter yet.
Niantic has been one of the few companies to successfully leverage augmented reality technology in gaming. Its debut title, Ingress, was lauded for its innovative, geography-based take on territory control, but it was Pokémon Go, released in 2016, that propelled the company to global fame.
While its subsequent releases have found success, none have reached the monumental scale of Pokémon Go. In 2022, Niantic laid off 8% of its workforce and canceled four projects, including Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. The following year, it cut 230 jobs and scrapped its NBA and Marvel-themed games.
In 2023, Niantic updated its Scaniverse app to allow users to create 3D models of real-world objects and share them with developers. In November, the company outlined plans to build a large-scale geospatial model that would use machine learning to “understand a scene” and link it with millions of other scenes worldwide.
