Scopely to buy Pokemon GO from Niantic
Scopely is in talks to buy Pokémon GO from Niantic, Inc. for $3,5B according to Bloomberg.
Another week and another big company exit from the game industry as we saw with AppLovin last week, selling its whole gaming portfolio to yet unannounced the buyer.
◾ The deal would include the whole gaming portfolio of Niantic, but realistically speaking, only Pokemon GO matters there, as it did 80% ($30 Mil.) of the whole portfolio revenue in the last 30 days. Monster Hunter Now is doing $4 Mil. a month (10,7%) and Pikmin Bloom doing $2,4 Mil. a month (6,6%). After the colossal success of Pokémon Go, the geolocation game that started it all in 2016, Niantic was never able to replicate similar success with other big IPs such as Harry Potter 🧙, NBA, or Marvel in the geolocation genre that it started. The company was never a gaming-first company, but rather Tech/ AR/ Geolocation first company, so after all those failures this seems as a smart move.
◾ Looking at the numbers, Pokémon GO already grossed $5,6 Bil. in revenue on 773 Mil. downloads from its launch in 2016. Regarding the results for 2024 only, it did $516 Mil. in revenue on 31 Mil. downloads. Ironically, even though it is a game based on outside-world exploration, its best years were during Corona epidemic, when it introduced features that enabled it to be basically played from home such as doubling the interaction radius from 40 to 80 meters, increasing Pokémon spawns, getting PokéBalls easier. So it seems the game’s best years are behind it.
◾ You would expect that Scopely is buying the biggest Pokémon game on the market, but that is not the case anymore as Pokémon TCG Pocket (the digital card game version we have been waiting for 20 years 😅) did more than double revenue ($66 Mil.) than Pokémon GO in January last month. Both games operate on revenue spikes based on their content expansion so it’s hard to compare, but Pokémon Pocket already passed $400 M in revenue from its launch in October 2024 and is not slowing down as its next expansion hits on February 28th.
Because of this, and the fact that these games have very similar audiences this deal now doesn’t sound that good to me, as Pokémon GO will decline even more sharply this year compared to the normal rate of decline if Pokémon TCG Pocket doesn’t exist.
