Advertisement
Advertisement

Released in June 2019, Wizards Unite was largely premised on Niantic’s existing, massively successful Pokémon Go ARG. Instead of playing as Pokémon trainers, they would play as wizards from one of the four Hogwarts houses, battling monsters and collecting resources in-game as they walked around in the real world.

Read More: The Creators Of Pokémon Go Mapped The World. Now They’re Mapping You

The free-to-play game was also stuffed full of optional microtransactions and harvested player data. But not enough apparently. VentureBeat reports that, based on data from mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower, while Pokémon Go made over $1 billion this year alone, Wizards Unite only brought in $40 million.

Instead, Niantic is ready to focus on its next big digital surveillance game: Pikmin Bloom. The collaboration with Nintendo sees players exploring the world in search of little flower creatures and helping them blossom into something more, either by walking a bunch or spending on in-app purchases. The company is also working on a Transformers ARG and a bunch of other projects.

“With nine games and apps in our development pipeline, some of which will go into soft launch in 2022, there are many more amazing worlds that we want to bring to life in new and unique ways,” Niantic wrote in a blog post today.

Advertisement

It’s anybody’s guess when those worlds will actually come into existence or whether they can recapture Pokémon Go’s lightning in a bottle before being snuffed out again.