The Pokémon Go studio is shuttering its Los Angeles office

Niantic, the mobile developer known for games like Pokémon Go and Pikmin Bloom, is making some big cuts. The company is shuttering its Los Angeles office, closing down NBA All-World, cancelling an upcoming Marvel project, and laying off roughly 230 employees.

In an email to employees, as first reported by Kotaku, Niantic CEO John Hank??e says he has made t??he decision to narrow the company's focus for mobile game investments.

"The mobile gaming market is very mature and only the best and most dif??ferentiated titles have a chance to succeed," Hanke sai??d.

Specifically, Niantic is closing its LA studio and reducing the game platform team, alongside reductions across the company, which will result in "around 230" employees laid off. NBA All-World is being sunset, and production is ceasing on Marvel: World of Heroes.

It's a pretty sudden, drastic shift. When addressing why these changes are happen?ing, Hanke says the answer is "straightforward"; that Niantic allowed expenses to grow faster than revenue.

"In the wake of the revenue surge we saw during Covid, we grew our headcount and related expenses in order to pursue growth more aggressively, expanding existing game teams, our AR platform work, new game projects and roles that support our products and our employees," Hanke said. "Post Covid, our revenue returned to pre-Covid levels and new projects in games and platform have not delivered revenues commensurat??e with those investments. This change will bring expenses and revenue back into line while preserving our core assets and long term upside."

A new reality

Moving forward, Hanke says Niantic will keep working on augmented reality. Pokemon Go remains a "forever game" and a top priority. Hanke also says he is confident about Pikmin Bloom, Peridot, and Monster Hunter Now's prospects.

The reduction of the platform team, though, is a reflection of Niantic's goal to "do less, better." It is, still, a ??rough day for the developers who work at Niantic and make all of these AR experiences happen.

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Layoffs will happen at the studio as well

Mobile augmented reality (AR) game The Witcher: Monster Slayer is closing its doo??rs next year. Developer Spokko is shutting down, with services fully ending next June.

The studio plans to gradually shutter its services over the coming months, as detailed in a new FAQ. The Witcher: Monster Slayer ??will fi??rst be taken down from the Google Play and Apple App Store on January 31, 2023, and all in-game purchases will be turned off at this time too.

Spokko also plans no more new content after the 31st as well. Players will still be able to play and exchange in-game currencies for items up until Monster Slayer's closure. The?n, on June 30, 2023, the servers will b??e shut down.

The team also made a statement, thanking fans for sharing in the Monster Slayer journey.

"We are proud that we were able to create a location-based AR experience that captured what it was like to be a witcher in real life and gave the community a chance to battle Witcher-world monsters up close and in person," the statement reads. "This is what made The Witcher: Monster Slayer such a unique experience in The Witcher franchise."

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhtWqIFydfo

Something ends, something begins

According to Spokko's statement, Monster Slayer did not reach its business expectations. Spokko will be rolled into CD?? Projekt Red, with part of its staff given the chance to join ??core CD Projket Red projects. However, there will be some staff let go.

While Monster Slayer was a bit strange, as a Pokemon GO approach to the world of The Witcher, it's still a shame to see the project's closure result in departures. CD Projekt seems to be broadly shifting its focus towards other areas, resulting in the winding down of several of its spinoff titles.

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The augmented reality developer is cutting back

Niantic, the company behind 2016's massively successful Pokemon Go, is cutting ba??ck. A new report reveals the company is cancelling several projects and cutting job??s.

Bloomberg reports that four Niantic projects have been canceled, including its Transformers game and a collaboration with Sleep No More company Punchdrunk. It's a?lso reportedly set? to cut "about 85 to 90" jobs.

Niantic hit huge success with Pokemon Go, the augmented reality game that turned into a summer craze for the ages. Pokemon Go still garners a massive following nearly six years later. Sensor Tower reports that Pokemon Go ?has now surpassed $6 billion in global lifetime spending, across the App Store and Googl?e Play Store.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sj2iQyBTQs

The success hasn't transferred over to every subsequent project, though. Niantic shuttered Harry Potter: Wizards Unite in January, and while Pikmin Bloom is pretty neat, it's also seemingly struggled to bottle the PokeGo lightning.

Walking around the block

In an email to staff seen by Bloomberg, Niantic CEO John Hanke reportedly wrote the compa?ny was "facing a time of economic turmoil" and needs to further streamline its operations, to weather any "economic storms" ahead.

"We recently decided to stop production on some projects and reduce our workforce by about 8% to focus on our k??ey priorities," a spokesperson told Bloomberg. "We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Niantic and we are supporting them through this difficult transition."

The company did recently reveal a new mobile game, called NBA All-World. It's a sports game intended to blend the real world with one-on-one basketball, as well as collecting and fashion. It also has Peridot, another real-world game ??featuring ??pet-like creatures, in development. We'll see if these projects can help bring Niantic further out of the storm.

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My mom calls it Bloomies.

Following the astronomical success of Pokémon Go, the mobile market has seen its fair share of competitors and imitators trying to capture the magic (and profits) of Niantic's global phenomenon. Everything from The Witcher to Jurassic Park to Garfield has launched its own location-based AR experience, usually with mixed results. Even Niantic has tried to replicate its success with similar games based on Settlers of Catan and Harry Potter. But much like their competition, they didn't fare too well against ??the popularity of Pikachu and Poké Balls.

Pikmin Bloom goes in a different direction. It's a more laid-back experience, letting players focus more on walking rather than collecting or battling. Where Pokémon Go might ask you to stop moving every 100 steps to catch a new 'mon for your collection, Pikmin Bloom encourages you to keep on walking to get that step count ??higher and higher. If that ma?kes it sound more like a fitness app than a game, well, that's because it is.

Pikmin Bloom (Android [reviewed on a Google Pixel 3a], iOS)
Developer: Niantic Inc.
Publisher: Niantic In.
Released: October 27, 2021
MSRP: Free-to-Play w/ Microtransactions

Pikmin Bloom can best be described not as a game but as a companion app to your phone's built-in fitness tracker. After you create your Mii in the app (or import it from your My Nintendo profile), you'll?? be given the task ??of simply walking around your town or city, planting flowers as you go with Pikmin in tow. You'll start with just one, but as you get out and move, you'll find more Pikmin seedlings waiting to be plucked into existence. Like with the eggs in Pokémon Go, each seedling requires a set amount of steps to be walked before they can be pulled from their pot and added to your?? crew. The more you walk, the more you level up, and the more Pikmin you can have following you around in the world.

As you and your Pikmin walk, they'll come across various fruits that are converted into ??nectar. Feed the nectar to your Pikmin and they'll sprout flowers on their head. Pluck a petal from those flowers and you can plant it the next time you go for a walk. The color of the nectar you feed them determines the color of the flowers that you can grow. The idea is that you and people in your neighborhood will plant enough of these digital flowers as you go to make your town look like the flower dress from the end of Midsommar.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp2StaIKZgk

What's nice about Pikmin Bloom is that it doesn't expect you to keep the app open while you walk. Though you will need to boot it up if you want to plant flowers, you can close the app and carr??y on with your routine knowing that it's tracking your steps and GPS location. Even if yo??u don't open it for a day or two, it'll still keep track of your movement. If your phone already has a pathetic battery life, believe me when I say this is not going to help things. Ever since I started using the app, I've had to charge my phone an extra time each day to keep it from fully draining.

When you are done walk??ing for the day or just taking a break in the afternoon, you can open the app to see all the pieces of fruit?? your Pikmin have found on your journey. Converting that to nectar will let them pick up more fruit the next time you get walking. As you level up, you'll also be able to send them on expeditions to pick up any large fruit or seedlings you passed throughout the day. The further away the item is from your location, the longer the expedition will take, though, from my experience walking around my town, it's never more than a 20-minute wait for them to return. If I still lived and worked in the Bay Area, I'm sure it would be a different story.

After you hit level 15, you can also send your Pikmin out on missions to destroy any mushrooms you crossed along the way. This will take a bit more time, but you are rewarded with more fruit upon completion. Mushrooms can be taken down alongside the Pikmin of o?ther players, and if you can find anyone else using this app where you live, you'll have to let me know what that's like. I am, as far as I know, the only person in my town bothering with it right now. And I'm sure everyone just assumes I'm playing Pokémon Go when I stop?? on the sidewalk to t??ake an AR picture of my Pikmin crew.

I've used Pikmin Bloom every day for more than a week now and I'm having trouble finding any reason at all to recommend it. Besides eating my battery faster than Joey Chestnut eats hot dogs, it's a rather pointless app. This is nothing more than a gussied-up pedometer with non-intrusive microtransactions that is slower to load on your phone. It doesn't have the excitement of discovering new types of pocket monsters on your journey or seeing the structures your friends have created in the now-defunct Minecraft Earth. Instead, it's hoping you'll care about beautifying your fake neighborhood with fake flowers (and the word "beautifying" is doing a lot of heavy lifting t?here).

Maybe for some, Pikmin Bloom will be a cute app they use with friends to track their steps and share photos of their Pikmin out in the real world. It certainly has the cuteness factor going for it. All Pikmin games do. But what it doesn't have is a strong motivating element that'll drive players to get out and explore the world. It's fine that this is a more passive experience than other location-tracking games, and I appreciate that it works? with my routine ?rather than forcing me to carve time out of my schedule to fit it into my life. But if my only reward for keeping the app around is a nearly dead battery and a flat map covered in flat flowers, I'd rather just stick with seeing my step count in Google Fit.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game downloaded from Google Play]}

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Hunting around the block for monsters

You'll be able to live out your monster-hunting dreams in real life later this month thanks to The Witcher: Monster Slayer. Announced today, the AR monster-sla??ying game hits iOS and Andro?id on July 21.

Pre-registration is live right now on the Google Play Store. The Witcher: Monster Slayer looks similar to other AR games like Pokemon Go, which encourage the player to roam around to collect different objectives; in this case, it's all about tracking and figh??ting monsters.

//twi??tter.com/TheWitcherMS/status/1410932191480238?083

According to the description, you'll have to track monsters using actual weather conditions and the time of day, e?quip armor and weapons, brew potions, and upgrade gear over time to deal with increasingly threateni??ng monsters. Taking them down earns you trophies, too.

There's more Witcher on the way thanks to the upcoming WitcherCon 2021, set to take place on July 9. CD Projekt Red has already confirmed there won't be a new Witcher game revealed at the show, though.

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