Scopely buys PokemonGo // Niantic Spatial NewCo
Scopely has acquired all of Niantic’s major gaming properties. Scopely was acquired by Savvy (the gaming unit of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund) last year and effectively has an unlimited balance sheet.
First, for Niantic Inc., we have reached an agreement for Scopely, a world leader in mobile games, to acquire Pokémon GO, Pikmin Bloom, Monster Hunter Now, and the incredible teams working on these experiences, for $3.5 billion from Scopely with an additional $350 million of cash from Niantic being distributed as part of the deal, yielding a total value of approximately $3.85 billion for Niantic equity holders.
The new Niantic Spatial focused team comes out with a clean $250 million balance sheet. What remains is a geospatial mapping team that:
Moves out of the 1st party gaming development business (consumer)
Refocuses on providing geospatial mapping services to robotics, autonomous vehicles and AI teams (enterprise)
Coatue previously invested $300 million at a $9 billion valuation. Niantic comes out with investors that are likely all made whole and playing with house money now. It’s unknown what the liquidation preferences look like for different parties on the cap table.
Between 2015 and 2021, Niantic secured at least $770 million in known equity investments, with Coatue, IVP and Spark Capital among its lead investors.
Future financing comes without needing to address the volatile nature of the gaming business (ie Wizards Unite). Niantic NewCo becomes an AWS for geospatial mapping and AR development.
Niantic will retain the Ingress and Peridot properties that were internally developed IP. These properties will serve as consumer facing avenues for demo’ing new features developed by the remaining Niantic R&D team.
Some implications:
Pokemon GO
Remote raiding increases - Scopely has no mission or incentives towards pushing for in-person raiding.
Most PokemonGO players probably like this.
Monetization increases - Are unskippable ads coming soon to PoGO and Monster Hunter?
Most PokemonGO players probably don’t like this
Do any of you still play PokemonGO? If so, what do you think of the trade-off between more remote raiding and more ads simultaneously?
Experiments
This year, I’ll be experimenting more with content at the end of essays and articles. Some of this content will come and go.
IRL Note
I’ll be at the a16z speedrun demo day next week if anyone is attending and wants to catch up in person.
Easter Eggs - Music
I will periodically share music I listen to while working.
Let me know if you like any songs!