Niantic Lays Off Hundreds and Cancels Even More Projects To Focus On Pokemon Go

Yesterday, it was announced that Niantic laid off hundreds of workers and also canceled many different projects solely so they could focus even more on Pokemon Go. This honestly doesn’t come as much of a surprise as the developers have seemed very focused on the future of Pokemon Go versus the other games they have been developing.

Niantic posted today on their website the email that was sent to many of the employees, which also provides some further insight on what the developers have in store for the future and what their plans are going forward. This message discusses how Niantic laid off around 230 workers yesterday.

Related: Niantic Issues Layoffs & Cancels Four Projects As Games Can’t Keep Up With Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go Developers Discuss What The Future Holds

To anyone who wants to read the full statement straight from the Niantic website, it can be found here. After sharing this long message with everyone, Niantic then shared what things would look like for their company moving forward.

• We remain long-term believers in augmented reality as the future form factor for computing.
• We believe that we can build key content and platform services that will help realize the promise of this technological shift.
• The rise of MR (video pass-through devices such as the Meta Quest Pro and Apple Vision Pro) validates the long-term importance of AR, but this class of devices is only an intermediate stepping stone to true outdoor AR devices.

Niantic went on to give a longer statement of how their strategic plan will be adjusting, which players might find interesting but also exciting for the future of Pokemon Go.

• The top priority is to keep Pokémon GO healthy and growing as a forever game. While we made some adjustments to the Pokémon GO team, our investment in the product and team continues to grow.
• We will also focus on making our recently launched games a success in terms of user retention, revenue, and profitability. I am confident about the prospects for Pikmin Bloom, Peridot, and Monster Hunter Now, but we have a lot of work to do.
• We are reducing and focusing our platform team in line with the reduced number of games we are building, with the goal to do less, better.
• We will continue to invest in our AR map and AR platform to enable developers to build, grow and monetize their own AR experiences. Our highest priority in this area is building an ecosystem of developers who create cross-platform, web (using 8th Wall), and Unity-based AR experiences. In the upcoming world of headsets, we expect much fragmentation, and we believe, as was the case in mobile, that content creators will demand cross-platform solutions that enable them to leverage their content investment across the greatest number of devices and users. Our Visual Positioning System and human-centric AR map will provide them with the industry’s best tools for creating entirely new ways for people to see and explore the world.

Related: Microsoft Considered Buying Pokemon Go Parent Company

It is incredibly sad to hear that so many people are being laid off during these hard times, especially with this seemingly happening so often more and more within the video game industry.