Four Niantic projects cancelled as company cuts staff

Niantic hit it big in 2016 with Pokemon GO, creating a Summer trend which saw the game reach millions of fans and in turn made billions in revenue. Unfortunately, the studio’s other projects have been much less successful, with 4 upcoming titles now being cancelled.

In a report by Bloomberg and Jason Schreier, it was revealed that Niantic is set to cut between 85 and 90 staff members from its team of roughly 800. Alongside the announcement of the job losses, Niantic has also cancelled 4 games which were previously in development:

• Heavy Metal
• Hamlet
• Blue Sky
• Snowball

Little is known about the latter two titles, however Heavy Metal was previously announced to be based on the Transformers license, while Hamlet was pitched as a collaboration between Niantic and Punchdrunk to “develop the next generation of live experience.”

Considering the fact that Niantic’s second biggest IP effort with Harry Potter: Wizards Unite shut down recently and its Settlers of Catan game never came out of beta, it is understandable to see why the studio would choose to downscale the number of projects in the works. Hopefully whatever the team works on next actually ends up seeing a release.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of these cancellations? Are you surprised? What Should Niantic focus on next? Let us know your thoughts down below.

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