While Niantic has not released financial figures, according to Sensor Tower, Pokémon Go has grossed $3.6 billion in revenue in its fourth year alone. For its 5th anniversary, Niantic will bring players Pokémon Go Fest, a music festival-themed event that will allow people to party in parks in 20 cities around the world or continue playing at home. But as the world recovers from the New Crown virus outbreak, Hanke said he expects players to return to their former Pokémon hunting grounds and visit new places.
Its said, "People have been locked up for 12 months, 15 months or longer, and it's going to be explosive activity in terms of people's desire to get back out into the world."
Hanke told the foreign press in the interview that the business is "really healthy" and that proceeds from Pokemon Go are being reinvested in at least 10 upcoming AR projects. These projects include an AR game with Nintendo that uses the Pikmin IP, as well as a game with the Transformers IP and a game related to the strategy board game Settlers of Catan. There is also a project with Punchdrunk, a theater company known for its immersive, Macbeth-inspired Sleep No More experience.
Hanke said, "We're really taking that idea and turning it into an arcade-style entertainment experience that you can have when you get out of the house and walk around and do things with your friends."
Hanke said that over time, the Pokemon Go game has evolved into a social experience with the addition of features like raid battles, where groups of people gather in real locations to battle powerful monsters and trade Pokemon, among other things.
"Every year we have at least one feature that really grabs people's attention," Hanke said.
He credits the game's continued popularity to data the company has shared, including players walking 28 billion kilometers and capturing 422 billion Pokémon. This AR experience takes people out of their homes to experience things they can't otherwise enjoy. Like many software companies, Niantic tracks how long people play the game and keeps an eye on whether players return to play again, but the company also records statistics such as how much time people spend walking while playing and how much they explore new places.
The upcoming Transformers game will use augmented AR technology to further integrate it into the world, allowing multiple players in the same location to see the same giant robot from different angles.
"The appeal of AR is the shared and persistent experience," Hanke said. The company is also working to make AR game elements more persistent and expects to release new AR games in 2022.
Hanke said the full potential of AR technology has yet to be realized, and he sees it as the next big way for people to interact with computing devices. But it expects video games to lead the technology into the mainstream. The company also worked with Microsoft to create a proof-of-concept demo of Pokemon Go for Microsoft's HoloLens AR platform.
Niantic is also proud of the diversity of Pokemon Go players, which includes a large number of women and people aged at least 30 to 40. Hanke believes the upcoming game will appeal to a more diverse audience, with Settlers of Catan, for example, focusing more on long-term strategic thinking, and Transformers, whose experience is more centered around live, real-time combat, which may appeal to the traditional gaming audience.
The upcoming Pokémon Go Fest will be festival-themed, and it will allow people to meet in parks in 20 cities around the world or continue to play at home. But as the world recovers from the New Crown virus outbreak, Hanke said he expects players to return to their former Pokémon hunting grounds and visit new places.
Its said, "People have been locked up for 12 months, 15 months or longer, and it's going to be explosive activity in terms of people's desire to get back out into the world."
